 Welcome to Senate Education and Brian Campion. We are about to kick things off today, Wednesday, the 13th of January. I thought I'd start by giving everybody a little bit of a sense of the direction we're going today and tomorrow and even Friday. It took a lot of your suggestions from yesterday during our brainstorming time and started to plug in some spots that we could hear from people connected to some of your ideas. Hopefully it'll generate additional ideas, conversations and possibly bills. Today, we're going to continue talking and getting a sense from those on the ground as well as those who are in contact with those on the ground regarding COVID. Also, just continue our tour of, if you will, education policy in the state of Vermont with some of the key players. Today, as people will recall, yesterday we heard from Secretary French, we also heard from Dr. Levine, and we started talking to the Superintendent's Association, the Principal's Association. Today we're going to hear from the Vermont NEA. I've asked them to spend some time introducing themselves, the work they do, how we might work and partner with them in the future, as well as talk about what's on the ground, what they're seeing, and what teachers and staff and students need at this point from their perspective, from this committee and perhaps from the Appropriations Committee, Health and Welfare, etc. I also asked them to give us a sense of what it's like to be a Vermont teacher. One of the things I mentioned, yesterday when we were reviewing some of our priorities, something that's really interesting to me, I think others as well, what is it like to teach in Vermont? What does it look like to become a teacher in Vermont? What's that process? What is it like to retire as a teacher in Vermont? What is it like to be in the classroom? Of course, these are some of their representatives, and I think we should also hear directly from teachers and if people have anybody in their district that you think, and please know this is a general invitation. If there are people in your district who are on the ground or people that you think would contribute to any of these conversations that we're having, I think that would certainly welcome that. After we hear from the NEA, we'll take, I'm not sure if we're taking a break then. Let's see. We'll take a couple of minutes, and then at 2.30, we'll hear from Joyce Judy, who's the President of the Community Colleges of Vermont. Yesterday I mentioned, I just threw it out there. As we're looking at remediation, is it possible? Should we be thinking about providing high school seniors with an additional, with a free year, if you will, of Community College? Could that fit into some package as we're looking at, again, what students may have missed and not experienced during this past year? There's also the question of what does a senior year look like in Vermont generally, and how dynamic, how exciting is that, or are there ways to, again, partner with CCV? I've asked President Judy to come in, talk to us a little bit about her work, CCV's work, and maybe, and just have a conversation with us, an early conversation about some of these possibilities. Then finally, and I also should mention, I mentioned to Joyce Judy, what we talked about yesterday, and I hopefully will become a common theme in here is, what and how can we partner with the Biden administration when possible? Are there ways to partner with them? If there are things that the Biden administration is looking to do, and if they match this state's interests and priorities, can we be an incubator? Can we be a pilot? I think Joyce Judy has some thoughts on that. Then I've also invited in the new Chancellor of the State Colleges, and asked her to give us an overview of the State Colleges, particularly also as it relates to COVID. With that, we can talk at the end of the meeting about what the end of this week looks like, as well as next week, but unless I see anyone who has any questions or concerns, I will turn it over to the Executive Director of the NEA, Jeff Fanon. Anybody have any questions or concerns? Okay, great. Mr. Fanon, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Senator Campion, and welcome back to Senate Education. Glad to be here. To this day, Senator Pertlick back, but also welcome Senator Taranzini, Senator Hooker, Senator Chittin, and Senator Lyons. Going around my screen here, my Hollywood squares. Yes, I'm Jeff Fanon, the Executive Director of Vermont NEA. Thank you for having us here. I'll introduce in a minute your Don Tinney, the President of Vermont NEA, and Colin Robinson, our Political Director. These are the faces you'll see in the Zoom environment now with you folks. If you have questions, we'll give you our contact information so you can reach out to us. By all means, please do so. We're here to advocate with you, and as you said, Senator Campion, to partner with you to make sure that the public school system, the education system in Vermont works as well as it possibly can for the betterment of all students. I mean, that's truly, I think we all can may have disagreements along the way about how we get there, but I think we're all striving for the same goal. Vermont NEA wants all children, as they say, to have an excellent education. Our purpose is to make sure our members have a satisfying work environment where they are acknowledged for the work they perform, where their work helps students do their best, and where the students' learning environment is also the educators' work environment. So that's important that they go hand in hand. Just I'll give you a quick rundown on who Vermont NEA is and then we'll get into some other details. We are an affiliate of the NEA. We've got some 13,000 members who are members of Vermont NEA. We represent not just teachers, but school support staff. So that means bus drivers, cafeteria workers, paraeducators, and they're working with students in schools right now. Most schools are open, frankly, and most educators are in the buildings right now. So they're working hard at work on behalf of their students. The structure at Vermont NEA is we've got the 20 member board of directors, their elected members, four statewide officers, Don being the president, and about 20 staff members who almost entirely consist of former teachers. We have two lawyers on staff, a general counsel and a staff attorney, but they don't bargain. So contrary to what you hear sometimes, we hire former teachers to work with our members to teach them how to bargain and sit down and have conversations with their school board members. So we've got elementary school teachers, music teachers, science teachers. They're the field staff that go around and work with our members to educate them and work with them. That's our model. That's how we work. We have some 20, I think it is subject matter affiliates, such as teachers of math, teachers of English, special ed, art, and those sorts of things. So we work with them as well. And we have about 100 or 110 or so local associations around the state. We're in every corner of the state. And our basic activity is we collectively bargain with our school boards over the terms and conditions of employment that include their salary, their work hours, their bus duty, prep time, all those sorts of things that go into teaching students and educating students who's on recess duty, those sorts of things all, because they're important, end up in a contract between the school board and the local association so that the school, everybody knows the rules of the road and they can operate well. We do, we are probably the largest provider of professional development for educators. That includes support staff as well as teachers. In the state, we are the largest provider. So we are providing a lot of PD as we call it to our members around the state all the time. And we think we do that well but that's one of our biggest jobs. And we do this, we do some public advocacy work and we are involved politically because the state house is involved in the school house. That means education fundings, things of that nature, learning issues that you deal with in house education but also just generally worker issues, worker rights issues that sometimes are found in other committees. So we'll be here in and out of your committee talking about these host of public policy issues. And I think with that, I will turn it over to Don to sort of get into the moment we're in now, the moment of the day, the pandemic. So with that, I'll introduce Don Tinney, the president of Vermont NEA. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. And if I do this correctly, is that correct? So good afternoon for the record. I am Don Tinney, a 31 year veteran English teacher from South Hero, currently serving as president of Vermont NEA. Thank you for this opportunity to speak with you today and thank you for serving on this most important committee. I am beyond proud to represent our extraordinary Vermont educators who have never stopped working to meet the needs of their students since the onset of the pandemic. Our members put forth herculean efforts in adapting to remote learning last March to continue providing instruction and engaging their students. Our food service workers, paraeducators and school bus drivers went above and beyond the call of duty to provide nutritious meals to students and their families. If COVID-19 has taught us one thing, it is how important schools are in providing a nutrition lifeline to the children and youth of Vermont. This is why our organization will continue to promote the implementation of universal school meals in every community because educators know that hungry children cannot learn. Feeding all of our children is an integral part of educating our children. This is just one true indicator of why the public school is the bedrock of every community. As essential workers on the front line, our educators have been going to work every day providing direct instruction and support to students in their classrooms, as well as students learning virtually at home. The hybrid models, which I'm sure you've heard about have allowed schools to maintain proper physical distancing and other safety protocols, but they have nearly doubled the workload of our teachers. Since they must plan and implement lessons for both the physical classroom and the virtual classroom. While students may not be learning every lesson in our traditional curriculum, they continue to learn on a daily basis and have had to acquire executive skills that they would not have ordinarily learned until later in life. Our support personnel, including custodial and staff, our educators, administrative assistants and food service workers continue to put themselves at risk on the front lines and service to their students. When we consider the health risks and the chronic unpredictability that our members have been enduring since last March, we can easily understand why they have been experiencing levels of stress and anxiety as never before. Our educators have always been focused on the social emotional wellbeing of their students and in these tumultuous days, we have been reminding them to focus on their own social emotional wellbeing. From being in meetings with folks from the Vermont Department of Mental Health, I know they share our concerns for the mental health of both our students and our education workforce. We must continue to work at banishing the stigma associated with mental health issues and make sure that the resources are available to provide counseling and other services to our students and our educators. In the spring of 2019, through a grant from the National Education Association, Von E.A convened a summit of nearly 200 education stakeholders to discuss trauma-sensitive practices and our approach to creating safe, compassionate schools. Our work has continued and over this last summer, we hosted a webinar series with Dave Melnick of the Northeastern Family Institute who discussed adverse childhood experiences, resiliency, and how we can shift our mindset about student behavior. We received additional funding from our national organization to work with our New England counterparts and a regional approach to this work, incorporating a train the trainer model and other ideas and how we can make this work sustainable over time and across all school districts. This is not work that can be accomplished by sending individual educators off to a workshop or holding one in-service training. In the virtual setting and in the classroom, we must continue to address the trauma our students and educators have experienced and pay particular attention to the minority trauma our BIPOC and marginalized students have experienced. We must continue to do everything we can to make sure every school is a sanctuary for every student. All of the additional protocols and programmatic adjustments demanded by the pandemic have dramatically changed the school day and our educators as to all vermoners long through the day when we can return to what we used to call a normal routine. We share the goal of our state leaders to return to full-time in-person learning but only when it is safe for students and for the education workforce. While learning has continued throughout the pandemic, remote learning is not an effective substitute for in-person learning where students experience daily interactions with their educators and peers. Since returning to full-time in-person instruction as a top priority, then protecting the health of the education workforce through vaccinations must also be a top priority. Since last March, our members have not only been busy planning their own lessons and rewriting their curriculum but have also been involved with local committees and implementing the state's health and safety guidelines and other protocols related to the pandemic. Over 20 of our members joined our Vermont NEA statewide task force on the safe reopening of schools to address the issues related to our return to the classroom. Before the start of the school, the task force hosted virtual town halls with Dr. Mark Levine, Dr. Brina Holmes, Dr. William Raskin, Dr. Benjamin Lee to disseminate up-to-date medical information to our members. They have also met with Secretary French to share their concerns and to hear his perspective on reopening. They continue to meet to address health and safety concerns and most recently hosted a webinar with industrial hygienists affiliated with the National Education Association to explore the issues related to ventilation in our school buildings. Air quality will continue to be an issue we need to address during the pandemic and beyond. And we appreciate the General Assembly's support of HVAC inspections and upgrades. As educators, we never thought we'd be learning so much about HVAC systems, epidemiology, physical distancing and the difference between viral droplets and aerosols. But the learning curve has been steep and interesting. Learning is at the core of what we do. Our educators cherish the time they spend with their students and are the people in their young lives outside of their immediate family who know them best. They know how their students learn and through ongoing informal assessment know what interventions and supports they need. Our educators will need additional resources to support their students as they address the unfinished learning from the pandemic. Vermont educators are up for that challenge driven and sustained by their love and commitment for their students. Thank you. I'll turn things over to Colin. Wonderful, thank you everybody. Great to see folks and welcome Senator Campion back to Senate Education. I will keep this brief so you all can have opportunities to ask your questions. But I did want to, as we look ahead, Vermont NEA has a comprehensive legislative agenda that we'll be sharing in the next week or so that touches on a suite of issues from education funding to educational equity and quality issues. But one specific issue that I wanna lift up as we look ahead to this pandemic moment and we look to recovery. There are models across the nation that it's a model called the community schools model. And it echoes a lot of the points that Don mentioned that schools are at the heart of our communities. They are the bedrocks of our communities and they provide supports to students and families so they can be successful learners. And this model is a metric through which schools can provide greater support for students and families as we recover from the pandemic. So what this would look like on the ground is perhaps having additional resources for families to receive medical support inside a school setting or mental health support or be able to receive connections with different state agencies for critical social and economic needs that they might have or housing assistance. The idea is that our schools, as Don said, are the cornerstones of our community and in that role, they provide a lot of needed support to students but our schools aren't necessarily the best equipped to provide those supports. So this community schools model would allow schools to develop partnerships with other organizations. So they could be hubs for students and families to receive the supports they need. So they students and their families can be successful citizens as well successful learners and allow educators, teachers and support staff to do the critical work as we emerge from this pandemic to be able to focus on learning. And so to that end, there is a bill that represents Kathleen James from down in Manchester introducing on the house side that we're hoping might end up in this committee to create a pilot structure of 10 schools across the state to be able to hire a, what's called a community schools coordinator, somebody to do a needs assessment, figure out what are the critical support students and families need to be successful citizens and successful learners. So the educators be insured that they're able to focus on the learning of the students as we emerge and move through this pandemic over the next several years. And that assessment would be the charge of the community schools coordinator who would then go out and figure out what state agencies can we partner with? What nonprofits can we partner with? What services can we make sure our students and our families are able to receive in a place where there's as little friction as possible? So they can have those needs met. And so as we look ahead and try to address the immediate needs now, what are the long-term needs and what are some innovative models that we could implement in Vermont to ensure our communities thrive, our students thrive and our schools and educators thrive as well. So with that, I will pause and thank you for having us today and allowing us to have this conversation with you at this critical moment. So thank you, Senator Campion. So you mentioned some stuff earlier but I'm gonna pause here and let, are there any questions for us at sort of this moment? And then maybe we can get into the stuff that you mentioned earlier if you want us to talk about. I guess I might just start when we're looking at things that Senator Kitchen and I met last evening for a little while about CARES funding and this committee's role in kind of doing some assessment and sending some of these ideas to appropriations. What are the things I guess right now that you are looking at that our schools might need either through funding. I'm curious about also your thoughts on reopening. So sort of immediate needs that you would tell this committee that you're seeing. Okay, well, I'll give it a stab and I know Don and Connell will correct me when I'm wrong. So I think that the whole disrupted learning is what we're calling it, right? Kids were learning up until the pandemic and then things have changed. So disrupted their learning and I think schools need resources to deal with the trauma that kids have suffered, right? That was a problem, as Don mentioned, we had a large meeting in 2019 over trauma in schools and it's exacerbated now through the pandemic and we know that. So when these kids are back, they're back now and they come back more full-time, they may need more resources, frankly, and that means people. I mean, kids need people and there's no substitute, as Don said, for the human interaction between an educator and her students, there just is not. And so in the short term, perhaps some of the, I think it was $127 million in the last package going to education ought to be focused on making sure that schools have the resources to educate their kids. Okay, but I mean, if just to push a little specifics, I mean, does that mean moving towards, certainly, what does that mean exactly? It means bodies, humans, employees, working with kids, frankly. Okay, so psychologists, mental health professionals, or? I'm sorry, yes, all of it. All of it, okay. Literacy specialists would be also critical there. I think we need to be planning more resources offered during the summer. I think we've seen some great success with summer programs, particularly in the transition years for eighth graders before they get into high school. I think that our folks could identify those students with the greatest needs and make arrangements for some summer programs. I don't necessarily think that everything has to happen this summer, but I think we need to build that in because we always have that gap in the summertime that we could make better use of for learning. That would be one indication. I will say one of the pieces that people have learned and appreciated in the hybrid model, which has been incredibly challenging because of the workload, the bright side of that though is because our educators have dealt with only about half their class each day, and then as they alternate, the class size has had a huge impact and they have got to know their students much more easily in the fall. Behavior issues were, for the most part, nonexistence because they didn't have as many students in the classroom. So I think when we talk about resources, one of the things we do need to look at is just what is the impact on class size, particularly for those students who are struggling, whether it be what we traditionally call a remedial reading class or classes that are designed specifically for struggling students. Can we keep those classes small so that they're still effective? Great, Senator Lyons, you have your hand up and then Senator Hooker. Thank you. And thank you for all of this. I think what you have been talking about resonates with what some of us heard at a Essex-Westford school meeting last night and Senator Chittin and I were there together so he can help with this one as well. But one of the things that we heard was the shorthandedness that people are feeling that staff reduction has been significant and as a result of COVID. And as we go forward, hopefully that'll change and people will regroup. But in the interim, I have two questions. I have a lot of questions, and I don't mean to comment so much up front, but just contextually, I think it's important. The issue of how best to provide those mental health or human services resources in schools has continued to be a debate. It's always about whose job is it. Teachers, of course, are, I'm always at main amaze at what our teachers do and what they can do for the development of children and helping counsel them. But the question is, as you're looking at the resource needs and including mental health, healthcare, all the rest, how do you see that happening? So is the point person, the school nurse, is the point person someone at AHS bringing in additional counseling staff? Is the point person the teacher who has faculty development to take them in a new direction? So this has been an ongoing question. What role does the teacher play and in human service needs and what role might school nurse play? You get my drift here. So I'm just looking for your thoughts. So Senator, I'd be happy to speak to that as best I can and then might defer to Don. You're exactly right. I mean, this is not a new conversation. Of course, your other committee, I know it's come up many times and there's been a lot of conversation. Quite frankly, how some of these costs are now baked into the education fund, right? In addition to the critical services. So I think, you know, as we look ahead, what would be most critical first and foremost is to figure out what's gonna work in each community. Cause I think we know that schools and school districts work differently in different parts of the state. And so a one-size-fits-all approach is not necessarily going to be appropriate because it might not meet the needs of places in various and diverse corners of our state. I do think fundamentally that's part of the reason why we're sort of interested in this pilot community schools model because what it does is it creates this one individual because one thing that we've learned and actually Senator Campion, one of the schools down in Bennington, we visited last spring, or sorry, not last spring, last fall, a year ago fall. And it was sort of adopted as a community schools model about 20 or so years ago. And what they realized is over the past 15 or so years, it's kind of not been doing exactly what they'd originally hoped. And I remember asking, well, why is that? And they said, well, it used to be the principal that did this, but then other stuff came up, right? And there wasn't one person who was able to own that work to build that connection with the designated agency, to reach out to the Department of Mental Health to say like, hey, how can we get additional resources in here to build that relationship with the food shelf or the federally qualified health center to maximize those resources and supports for students and families. So I think having that one person that owns that work is really critical. I'm not sure that putting it on educators is necessarily the best just because they might not have the expertise. And I think, you know, quite frankly, I'm sure the Department of Mental Health and the Agency of Education have, we all know, a tremendous amount on their plate right now as well. So I don't know that that fully answers your question, but I think that that's sort of what we're trying to drive at with this notion. It does begin to answer the question. And I think ultimately, because it does sound like a terrific program, it does get down to how it's funded and adding more into the education fund for me is, I think our constituents would roll their eyes. Having said that, then if you'd ask our designated agencies or AHS similarly, they would start to roll their eyes. So this is gonna take a little heavy lift on the resource part, but I guess the question I have is, it seems to me that this is so very much related to COVID and having some urgent response to the increased mental health needs that the CRF should possibly be available to sort of jumpstart the pilot programs that you're talking about. So I'll leave that to the chair of the committee to duke that one out with someone, or I can help. It'll be all hands on deck. Senator Lines, did you have a follow up to that? No, I think that's good for now. I think we've got a lot to go through. Okay, Senator Hooker. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First, I wanna say that I don't know if it's just my internet, but I'm occasionally having kind of glitches and that just underscores the need for better broadband, which is an immediate thing that we have. Secondly, I want to commend Mr. Tenney for the webinar last night on pensions. I think that's another thing that we need to talk about as far as education is concerned. And thirdly, Mr. Tenney, you mentioned last night that there's a possibility of a bill that would facilitate bringing perhaps retired teachers back into the classroom. And that seems to me like it could be an immediate kind of fix for the need for more people. And I don't know if that's something that you wanna discuss or... Right, I believe the bill you're talking about was introduced by Jay Nichols of the VPA. But one of the, so I think that's the bill. In terms of bringing retired folks back, I think it's, if they feel safe, I think our retired folks have historically been our best substitute teachers in my experience, right? They know the school, they know the kids. I think that's one thing to be thinking about. I do think, as Jeff mentioned, we're going to be nationally at a crisis level of teachers wanting to retire earlier than expected. So I do think we have to look at the workforce in that way, so. Which brings me to another point because I've just begun the process of introducing a bill that would allow for, excuse me, I'm losing my video here, I think. Allow for loan forgiveness for people who go into teaching and will stay in the state. So I'm hoping that that gets some traction. I think that would be extraordinarily helpful. I think one of the financial aspects of the profession are one of the things that keep young folks out of the profession because they see opportunities elsewhere. I do think we need to be creative about how we bring folks in. I do want to caution however, as former chair of the Vermont Standards Board for professional educators that in some states they have wanted to lower standards for folks as they come in. And Vermont has a very proud and rich tradition of holding our educators to a high standard for entering the profession. And I think that we need to maintain that because our children and youth deserve the best teachers. And the Standards Board is the gatekeeper for that. So, and I think that would be true whether you're bringing somebody back out of retirement or recruiting someone elsewhere. Thank you. And to speak just briefly to Senator Lyons' point, one of the reasons we're doing all the work and with social emotional wellbeing and shifting the mindset of education and workforces, we probably couldn't find enough mental health counselors to deal with all the issues. So we need to have the time, the resources devoted so that everyone in the school is thinking in terms of social and emotional wellbeing. And then those students and staff who need more direct mental health services that they are directly available, but we're not, we can't expect all the behavioral issues and all of the trauma cases to be addressed by a mental health counselor. We have to do that community-wide. So we'll continue that work. I hope that's helpful. Senator Taranzini. Thank you, Senator Campion. Colin and Jeff and Don, nice to meet you. I took some notes. I'm not all that well. My thoughts are not all that well organized. I was listening as the three of you gentlemen were speaking. So I think I'll just sort of popcorn a few of my thoughts here and things that are important to myself as a committee member. And I think many of our constituents. Number one, and we talked about it in health and welfare, but just as we have a nursing shortage and we need to figure out a way to do a better job of retaining our college age young adults and encouraging them if they go to school out of state, come back home and give us an opportunity. We have to figure out a way, I believe, to keep young aspiring teachers in the pipeline. And I don't know the answer to that, but it's a problem that I think we can all recognize that we are losing too much talent to other states because they choose to go to college elsewhere. And then, you know, it's for one reason or another, they don't come back home and give us a shot. Number two, broadband, broadband, broadband, you know, I can't say it enough. It's to me, it's one of those nonpartisan issues. I mean, everybody and any elected official should recognize in 2021 that we need to do better for all residents. And that impacts our students so much, especially with them being home. I have four children, two of which are in elementary school. And, you know, the struggle is real, as they say, with broadband. And I don't live in Rutland Town. I don't live in a rural community that, you know, struggles with those issues every day. So there's that. And Senator Campion, if I go off on a tangent, keep me in check here, all right? Meals for children, lunches, especially, you know, to me, there's nothing more heartbreaking than hearing the story of a child going home hungry or not having a meal. As one of you said, we know that good nutrition leads to good education and good participation and so on. So that's an important issue that, you know, the school has to, the school of 30, 40, 50 years ago, to me isn't what it, you know, is. Today, it's for their education. It's for their psychological needs. It's for, you know, some students, unfortunately, the best meal of the day is what they get in the cafeteria at lunchtime. And then, you know, the retired teacher, the idea is a good one. And I think it's almost heroic for some of these teachers to come out of retirement, come back in the classrooms with the risks of the pandemic, especially if they're in that 65 plus age range and they choose to. And I would love to see these folks, if they choose to come out of retirement, have the state figure out a way that they could become part of that one A or one B or whatever the category is for the vaccines because if they're coming back into the classrooms, we know in a normal year, what the stomach bug and the flu and everything else that circulates a classroom in January and February, you know, now to think that a teacher coming out of retirement could possibly be infected with the coronavirus, especially at a later stage in their life. I mean, it would be heartbreaking. And obviously, it's my opinion, along with many that funding education is critical, but funding it fair and equitably across the board is important as well because our property, many property owners feel that taxes are too high and that could be a deterrent for keeping people in Vermont. And finally, I would just ask a question here, not that we need to solve this today, but I wanted your opinions. Interestingly enough, I heard from a constituent during the campaign and I heard the other day from another constituent as I dropped my daughter off at school, both of these parents were in favor of putting seat belts on school buses. No, I don't think I have an opinion either way. I hadn't even thought about it until these two different people brought it up, but if the NEA had a position on that for against and like I said, this is the first time I've even brought this up in a legislative session. So I hope I didn't blindside anyone, but thoughts on that. It's an interesting question. I know Senator Perkslich from transportation's also on this committee. I don't know if he wants to weigh in here, but we'll start with the NEA. Do you have a position on that? On the seat belt issue? Yeah, well, it's on the table. Yeah, no, no, it's fair. Thank you, Senator Ternsey. You put a lot on the table. It's good, good rich discussion to have, certainly. The seat belts on the school bus, I've never understood why they're not there, frankly. I mean, when my kids were little, they were buckled in and should be. And so I think, and they remain so. And now it's part of their DNA, right? I mean, they get into a car and they drive and they put on a seat belt is who they are. And I think the same could be over the long course to get these kids on a school bus in a seat belt. There must be some reason I'm not aware of why there isn't. And so I'll just, maybe somebody here does. I do not. Senator Pershe, did your committee, have you ever looked at this? Yeah, it has come up. I can't remember the reason. I know some school bus have seat belts, so it's voluntary and it's not required. So I'm not sure why, but I do remember we talked about it, but Senator Jitton and I can bring it over to that committee and bring it up. I know we regulate the colors of the buses all down to the very detail. So we definitely could do it, but I know we've talked about it. I just can't remember why it was decided not to make it a requirement. Well, I appreciate that. Senator Lines, do you know something about this? No, I don't know how far it goes, but when I was on the school board, it was all about whether or not we were going to buy a school bus with seat belts and all the pros and cons of it. And ultimately was an individual school decision or school board decision or supervisory district decision. It's probably still that way. And I don't know whether the Department of Health has a policy on that or not, but that'll be fun in transportation to take that one up. Another committee for us to enter into. I don't know if Senator Terzini is gonna have a bill drafted about this, but maybe in the meantime, Senator Persley, if you could just give us, maybe tomorrow, if you have time just to check in and give us a little bit of an update. I mean, keep it simple, five to 10 pages, little PowerPoint, just. But Senator Campion, I hope I didn't open a real can of worms here with the seat belt. No, no. It was just interesting to me that I heard it twice from different constituents. So it must be on the minds of some people out there. Yeah. Good point. So any other questions related to anything right now while we have these folks here as it relates specifically to COVID, Senator Campion. I just have to say I'm married to a teacher and she has been working double time and I just wanna thank all the teachers that you represent for everything they've been putting in to delivering quality education during this pandemic. And I'm interested to hear from the NEA as we go forward the durable changes. So what we've learned from this pandemic and what we wanna see persist even post pandemic. I know she commented how teacher student conferences have actually been a lot easier to perform with these virtual platforms now that everybody has been accustomed and tuned to them. But I think that's a lessons learned that I look forward to having the discussion of after we get out of this pandemic. So thank you, Senator Campion. Jeff, I'm not sure this should go to you but one of the things we've heard now from multiple groups we've heard from Secretary French, the Principal's Association, other associations about what needs to happen. Is there a committee that is working together sort of that's putting together something that's saying, okay, this is what we need and this is what we're going to do. This is collectively what we need from appropriations. I've heard things about summer programs, pilot programs, assessment, mental health. Sort of a COVID slash post COVID committee or is I just don't want everybody working in their own silos. That's what I'm trying to get at. And the Principal's Association put together some really good points yesterday. You're all raising good points. How is that gonna happen? Well, it should happen. I'll say that and I could not agree more. And we do, I mean, unfortunately, we're all working in our little Zoom silos and we used to meet regularly with the folks over two prospect, the superintendent's school boards and principals and special ed directors and we don't anymore for obvious reasons. But I just spoke with Jeff Francis and Jay Nichols an hour and a half ago whenever it was, two hours ago. And so we do speak with them. We should probably, and your point is well taken, we should be coordinating how we wanna focus our attentions and energies. We do have disagreements. I'm not gonna say that we don't, but on a large host of issues that you've just outlined, we should be on the same page and probably are and ought to be working together with the administration and Commissioner of Health, for example. Yeah, and I think Senator Kitchell would also probably, I don't wanna speak for it, but after my meeting with her yesterday, I think people would just appreciate, hey, we've all come together. And these are the seven points that we can agree on. And this is the amount of money that it's gonna take for us to run these things as we deal with COVID between now and everyone being vaccinated and somewhat back to normal and then kind of a post-COVID kind of world. So I don't wanna just say, I wanna leave it with all of you, but I'm wondering if maybe just, I guess, let us know also how best to help facilitate this conversation. But I don't think it's a conversation that should happen in committee. I think ideally you all come to us with some kind of plan. And I don't know if you're all willing to take the lead on that or if I should reach out to Secretary French or how best to do it. How about this, Senator? I will take it, I've got a note to myself and I'm gonna reach out and just we do meet with the Secretary of Education on Fridays, all of the groups. And that's been going on since March or April and it feels like forever on a weekly basis on Fridays. But we have, I mean, those have been, frankly, just very critical needs of the week. You know, closing schools in the spring, reopening them in August, September, issues of masks and all the athletics and all the fun stuff that go into running a school and questions for the Secretary and the superintendents and us and everybody. So that might be a nice place to do it, but I think initially I will promise to you, I'm gonna reach out to my colleagues, if you will, at Two Prospect and start that conversation with them. Thanks, I'd appreciate that. And so what I'll do is I'll loop back to Senator Ballant, Senator Kitchells and Senator Lyons when I see her and say, hey, these are the, Jeff Vannon is working on this and he'll be back in touch with us to help so that we can be helpful to kind of facilitate this. So we can all get one thing going. Right, and I know Don wants to say something. I just wanted, you know, one quick example. I've met twice now with Jeff Francis and Jay Nichols and Heather Boucher on specifically on the truancy issues that we're seeing right now. And that's where we began talking about regional approaches, what resources are necessary. So as we begin to look at those issues, I think it's very natural that we begin to figure out, okay, here are the resources we need. Could this be something community schools are addressed? Do we need, you know, case, do we need a case manager in each district to handle just the truancy issues because that lack of engagement with students? So really like that approach. And I think we can, you know, make that work as we begin to see which issues are identified and what we need to address those. Great. And the truancy issue is big. I mean, I think it's 30 to 40% in some places. Yeah, it's scary. You know, I mean, I think I've made it clear my uncle is a principal at the elementary school in Hardwick and I know that, you know, he hasn't talked to me about truancy, but he's just talked about, you know, the kids that are kind of are off their radar. And normally if these are children that would be on their radar and they can check in. And I think unless there are final questions from the committee, I think we'll leave it there for today since we, I do want everybody to just, I was reminded today by leadership, give everybody a moment to stretch before we have Joyce Judy join us in just about 10 minutes. And any other final questions, comments? Senator Hooker. Just before the group goes, with regard to reopening schools in April, I think I'd like information on what you think will be the standard for giving the go ahead or for feeling comfortable enough to have everybody back in school in April. And just to give you some information there, yesterday we asked that question of Dr. Levine. And, you know, I think generally, I don't have my notes right in front of me, but he was looking at community spread and spoke pretty generally. So it would be interesting to hear also the kinds of things that you are all thinking about. I don't know if you have a sentence or two now to mention, Jeff, or if you'd prefer to come back, it doesn't matter to me. Yeah, I mean, the vaccines are critical. We're open now. Let me just reiterate that. And this is about giving everybody in person at the same time after the April break. And I think the other question we have is that it's not answered yet, and we need to answer it before we do, is what about the families who don't want to send their kids back to school for various and good and valid reasons? Our teachers going to then have to work two jobs, if you will. And we think that's a real concern. The superintendent raised it last week with Secretary Vedd. And so it's not just metrics about how you get back in, but it's sort of the details about how you do open once you think it's safe and everybody's vaccinated, which is part of the safety issue. Okay, we'll leave it there. This is helpful. And I appreciate, Jeff, you taking a lead with your colleagues in the other departments and also working with the agency to help us come together with a plan. That would be great. And feel free to be in touch with me or any of us for assistance along the way. And then maybe we can touch base early next week just to see how things are, it's going to work out that way. Okay, I'll see everyone else in- Senator Campion? Yes, please. Would you please remind everyone to shut off their video and mute themselves for the break? Absolutely. You heard it there first. So thank you, Jeanie, for that. And we'll see you all back in about five minutes. So just a couple of things that people brought up that I just want to let you know. Information is on its way. We're going to get a briefing this week on broadband. I don't remember if it's tomorrow or Friday, but I've asked Juneteer need to come in, talk to us. A lot of that work is done on finance, but we certainly should and need to play a role. And then also a little bit about property taxes and education funding. I know some of us have been through these kinds of how it works conversations, but they're always a good reminder. And I've asked Treasurer Pierce to come in also to talk about pension liabilities, bonding and her role with this committee. So this is informational stuff that'll be coming. But let's continue our discussion. It's great to have President Joyce Judy of the Community College of Vermont with us for a conversation about our community colleges, our community college system. As I mentioned, President Judy called me yesterday after hearing that perhaps it might be considered in some way through with our committee and other committees giving students an additional year of high school or giving them a free year at CCB if that were to make sense. We also talk a little bit about partnering with perhaps with the Biden administration if they are putting out pilots or if there is funding coming from the feds on reducing the tuition costs and just the community college in general, what's happening now, what it is, how it works. A little bit about your own personal history would be great as well, President Judy. And what you might be seeing on the ground right now with regard to COVID and classes as a college institution. So with that, I'll turn it over to you. Thanks for joining us and we're thrilled you're here. Great and thank you so much for the opportunity. I'm Joyce Judy, I'm president of the Community College of Vermont. And as Senator Campion said, he and I were talking last night, he suggests I come in and give a little bit of an overview of CCB, although there are many familiar faces on this committee. And so some of you probably could give this overview as well as I can. So I'm grateful to that. I'll give you a little overview. Then I'll talk really specifically about our dual enrollment early college and then a little bit about the McClure Foundation gift that was given to graduating seniors. And then I'm happy to answer questions go in any direction. So really this is intended to be a conversation. I'm not here to pitch anything because Senator Campion said it would just be great to have people have just a general baseline of who and what the Community College of Vermont is. So just to give you a little bit of a background, CCB actually celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. And if anyone had told me last February, when we actually were in the state house to celebrate our 50th, that we would be celebrating our 50th with nine months of our centers essentially being closed. I would have thought people were nuts. But instead we did, but what has been really, really fascinating is CCB is as strong or stronger than ever. So I am incredibly proud of our staff and faculty for the way we've been able to take advantage of what's going on in the environment and build on it. But we are 50 years old and at the time when we were created, Governor Dean Davis's vision was, how do you take and provide a college education to Vermonters in their locally and the challenges do it in a really rural state? And so how do you do that? And his core belief was that Vermont communities are incredibly rich. And with talent, you take people that are interested who are practitioners, put them in a classroom with people that are highly motivated to learn and you really have something special. And I would say that core value has carried us through for 50 years. Now we look a lot different and we've made a lot of changes back in the 70s. Tuition was free and faculty taught for free except they passed ahead at the end of a class. And if you hit the mark, you might get a donation. If you didn't, you might not. And if you had, you know, all those iterations. So, but we've come a long way. And today, I think probably most of you know that we are the second largest college in the state of Vermont next to the University of Vermont. But one of the things that I'm particularly proud about is we serve more Vermonters than any other college in the state. We serve, and that is our population, 95% of CCV students are Vermonters. And I would dare say that the other 5% are not people who came here for their education but moved here and haven't been here for 12 months so they don't qualify for in-state tuition. The other handful or two is we always have some international students who came here for an international experience at one school and it didn't work out and they continue using their J1 visas at CCV. But essentially, CCV has in a pre-COVID environment and a post-COVID environment, we have 12 centers throughout the state of Vermont. So we have 12 physical centers and we have always prided ourselves in being within 25 miles of 95% of the state's population. So it is, we are a statewide entity and people can find their way to us relatively easy. One of the things that is really and was just so fortuitous for us, particularly with it given this current environment is that we started our first online course in 1996 long before it was popular. At the time, we actually piped in Senator Leahy from Washington with duct tape and orange juice cans and everything, but we thought that was the coolest thing and today it would be pretty standard. But we decided that we wanted to get into online education because it was another way of increasing access to Vermonters. So yes, we struggle with broadband and I heard some of the earlier comments. Yeah, it's a huge challenge but providing online and remote education still provides opportunity for so many who would struggle with having to physically go to a place. So we were pre-COVID, nearly 50% of the, we run about 700 to 800 classes a semester and almost 50% of them pre-COVID were online. So it was really, that was never our intent to necessarily grow it that way. It's just, we're consumer driven and so students were, that is the way many, many students choose to learn. But we feel like we have created a niche with online. Our classes are small. We require a lot of interaction and we're one of those odd places we take attendance online. So students have to participate two or three times a week in their classes with interaction. It's not synchronous. It's asynchronous but because one of the responsibilities that we have is I believe that we need to help learners become good learners and strong learners. And so providing that discipline and structure is part of our program. So this past fall, we had more than 5,000 students enrolled in more than 700 classes and our enrollment, we bucked the trend nationally. Many community colleges and as you know, many traditional and based colleges were seeing a significant decrease in enrollment. And CCB actually was written up nationally because we did not see that. We actually saw just a tick up above last fall. So our enrollment has held steady. And when I was interviewed for a couple of publications, they said, so why do you think your enrollment grew? And I said, I'd like to know why our enrollment grew and give them an answer. The same way when enrollment doesn't grow, you'd like to be able to point to something and say, this is why it did or this is why it didn't. I feel like we put some stuff in place that I'd like to point to that did believe or helped us grow. But sometimes it's hard to point to all of those things. But to give you a sense of our students, we serve a huge diversity of students. And again, as I mentioned, 95% of our students are Vermonters. Our average age right now is around 27. It used to be like 30, 31. But one of the things that's been very interesting for us is for years, we saw very few traditional age students. But today we, 50% of our students are between the ages of 18 and 22. So we are seeing a huge number of traditional age students. And I attribute that to a number of things. And one clearly is economics. People can come to CCD. They can do their first two years or the equivalent of their first two years and then transfer. They can transfer to another Vermont State College. They can transfer to the UVM. UVM we have tons of articulation agreements. UVM actually posts on their website this UVM courses on the CCD equivalents because there's so much traffic between the two. So it is a way to, by starting at CCD or a community college, it does make a college education far more affordable than other options. And as you can imagine, we see a very high significant number of our students, our first generation, usually between 60% and 70% of our students, our first generation. We are particularly proud of the number of veterans we serve. Every semester, we serve more than, usually, right around 400 military-military connected students. So that's, we have, and we've gotten a lot of philanthropic support to provide special support to our veterans and our veteran programs. And we are particularly proud of our track record with veterans. In addition, because we have a very large presence in Chittenden County, we also see, we have 21% of our students in Chittenden County are minorities. And we see a tremendous number of new Americans. And I would say that if you walk into our, in pre-COVID or post-COVID times, not during COVID, you will see an incredibly diverse population, particularly in our Winooski Center, but throughout the state. But I would say that, particularly in Winooski, and that is another thing that makes us incredibly proud that we have established an environment that is open, and respectful, and accessible to all students. Just in terms of a couple of things related to the COVID environment. So we moved from offering about 50% of our courses on in-person, on-ground, to we, as all of us had to, in higher ed and in K-12, moved to remote learning in March. But we did it in a way that we offered five different options for remote learning. So we have our traditional online courses, which are all asynchronous. And we also have, and we had started this pre-COVID, but we really have accelerated, and I actually think this is going to be one of the silver linings of COVID, that this is going to become an incredibly popular format, is a combination of synchronous and online. So synchronous, where people actually have some structure, and they get to meet with their class, get to meet with their faculty member. Of course, this is all remote, but it gives you that structure. You can have a real sense of a class. And then another part of the class is all online. So for people that like or are energized by a classroom environment, they get that synchronous piece. But for our adult students, and when I talk about adults, I mean they're 18 or to 80, because we think of all of our adults, all of our students as adults, because none of them, or very few of them, would identify themselves as, if you met them on the street and you say, what are they doing? None of them would say, I'm a full-time student, and then I'm doing this. They would say, I'm working at so-and-so. I'm a parent, and oh, by the way, I'm going to school. And so when we think of our students, we think of them all as adults, because they have multiple responsibilities. And so I think for adults, removing having to travel and be in a place at a given time each week presents some challenges, particularly for students for whom their schedules, they have children, transportation. So I do believe that the synchronous online option is going to continue to grow in popularity for us. The third format that we've been doing is hybrids. We actually, for some of our lab courses, there's mostly online and an occasional on-ground component. So it's face to face. We're starting to do a lot more accelerated courses, which can be completed in seven weeks. And as you know, I mean, this is the culture of today. People want to do stuff really fast. They'll do it intensely and then move on. And so for students who are looking, who just either want to get through their program pretty quickly, or they know for the next seven weeks, I can really focus on this, but I don't know after the next seven weeks. And then the final one, and we got some terrific support from some philanthropists to launch this, is a program that we call Flex. And it's built at its model after some programs, particularly in Kentucky, around workforce development, where adults can start, there are multiple start dates. So there's five different times you can start a course over the course of a semester, but here's the key. Everybody has to finish at the same time. So we have some students who you just know that the first two months of their year, September and October are really busy, but once November comes, I can focus for two months. And so it's been pretty amazing. We offered just, we did a soft launch of three courses last spring. We're running 15 courses this fall, and we'll be running more this spring. So it's interesting because adults can then, they don't have to start at the same time. And giving, I think the key for us is building in as much flexibility as we can with students. But so we try to make it as easy as possible for students to attend, but the rigor and the challenges have to be there because no matter what, we need to prepare students for the next step. So whether they're gonna transfer or whether they're going into a job or they're there because their company sent them, the rigor and the standards have to be there. So on the front end, we wanna remove as many barriers, but then just make sure that the students are getting what they need. I'm just gonna talk just briefly about some of the work we're doing with secondary ed because I have to say that I am, this is where Vermont has excelled in terms of thinking of being very progressive. And I'm really grateful to the legislature for seeing their way forward to fund dual enrollment in early college, early on. This past fall, there were 800, we had 830 students who were enrolled in dual enrollment courses. And last fall, we had 819. So normally in a given year, we serve about between 15 and 1600 students in dual enrollment courses. So dual enrollment means that a student, this is the funding from the legislature where a high school junior or senior can take up to two classes during their junior or senior year college classes. And what it does is it, for me, it does two things. One, it helps so many students who didn't imagine that they could do college work, because I'm a chance to experience that. And also, students who are very savvy can take those six credits and when they enter college, they now have six credits that they can use towards their degree. And for some, they struggle with a course in college or all of a sudden they, instead of taking five or six courses, they can take four. It just gives them a lot more flexibility. The other piece that I would say is just an incredible thing and I think it will continue to grow. So in fall of 14, the legislature funded the program called Early College where high school seniors can take their entire senior year. It's part of Act 77 to flexible pathways, students for whom high school is not working for whatever reasons. Socially, they've exhausted the academic program, they just need a different environment. So in fall of 14, we had 56 students statewide enrolled in Early College and this fall we had 176. So it, you know, and for these students, they get a full year of college and the stories that we continue to collect of students for whom this has made the difference between them, then their families decided that they could go to college and it's made it so affordable. I will say that and the continuation rate for Early College is pretty incredible. So student, and this is based on, it's not based on this past year's data because we try to collect it longitudinally. 71% of students who have enrolled in Early College have continued that next year. That's pretty high. And so we are, what we haven't done is a next step to see if they just took a semester off and come back, but this was they continued right on. And so we are, you know, I can't tell you how many students have said to me or how many families like our, because of Early College, my family can now afford to send my kid to school, to college, it's just, it's hugely beneficial. And so we are particularly, this is an incredibly strong program and it says something about Vermont. We just need to do more of it. One of the things that we are trying to figure out is, you know, I think all of us, if you look at all the national data and Vermont's the same, you know, we all struggle with keeping young men engaged and we've got to figure out how to do more with even Early College and dual enrollment around, we've started to really begin to focus on what are the strategies that we can do in working collaboration with K-12 schools around young men because it's a huge challenge. I mean, we have a number of young men, it's not that we, you know, but if you look at the percentages, you know, CCV is very similar to most colleges, you know, where, well, it fluctuates between 65 and 70% women. And, you know, the, and, you know, I would say that that is wonderful on one hand and, you know, how do we reach a broader population? I think is a challenge. So then my final piece that Senator draw here, complete blank campion, I was going to say Senator Bryan, but I was new that that was a quite right. Yeah, was, you know, we have for years had a very close relationship with the J. Warren and Lois McClure Foundation. We have, we consider them a partner. They have been incredibly supportive of our work. You know, I think it's a, it's a match because they're so concerned about access to college for all Vermonters. They're just an incredible foundation and just really thoughtful folks. So they came to us and said, we want to do something. This was like in the middle of May. So we're not talking about this happening in March or April. They said, we want to do something really special for the class of 2020. We feel like they have missed out on their final three months of their senior year, no proms, no sports, no nothing. We want them to know that we care and that Vermont cares about them. And so they came forward with, and we're gonna, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna offer all high school graduates a free course at CCD so that we know, they know that somebody cares and that has realized that they, and so they made, the simplicity of the program is amazing and I think is what really made it so successful. There were no income guidelines and there were no guidelines, no, like you can only take these courses or these courses or whatever. Nope, if you graduated from high school in 2020 and you could register to take any course you wanted at CCD, any, and now I have to have to, there's one pause there, any course that they're eligible to take. So students still had to take our assessments or they had to give us their high school transcripts. So, if you struggled with writing, you weren't gonna take English comp too and if you, but essentially you could take any course, whether it was a three credit course or a four credit lab, we will, the foundation covered it. And so, we, CCD over the last two or three years has seen about 300 June graduates enroll at CCD in the fall of, in the following fall. This year we saw 600. Now, I don't, it's not something, we're in an odd environment. I realize, there's COVID, there's all kinds of things going on. So can we attribute the doubling of that just to the McClure gift? No, of course not. But I think you can't dismiss that it did make a difference. And I think that the other thing that is always interesting to me about the J. Warren and Lois McClure Foundation, they're always looking also to do the right thing philanthropically, but also how do they influence policy? And so, I think that one of the things that they have been concerned about is the financial barriers of kids, of Vermonters going on to college. And, as you all know, we're one of the most expensive community colleges in the country. And essentially, and we're less than a thousand, but I always say to people, if you're budgeting, you need to budget $1,000 of course. And so for so many of our students, it's not, I'm gonna go to CCBR, I'm gonna go someplace else. So I'm gonna go to CCBR, I'm going nowhere. And so, the sort of the secondary thing that the McClure Foundation wanted to see is if they remove the cost, would they see an uptick? Because as you all know, we have one of the highest grade, high school graduation rates in the country and one of the lowest college going rates. And I have to tell you, I've been at this job for a long time and that is a nut that is really hard to crack. We keep working at it, we keep trying to make changes, we change numbers, we see more, but do we see huge strides? No, and we keep working at it. But they feel, they wanted to test out if we removed, if we sort of got cost away a bit. Would we see an uptick? Now, this is an Anna one. And so, there's nothing that says that, yep, if you move around finances, this will do. But if you look at that, it's something to think about because they did remove finances and we saw it doubling. And I would also add that as you all did in September approved using some CRF funds to support adults who had been impacted by COVID to come and take a course. And you removed the financial barrier and we saw 800 students enroll. So there is something to the cost that none of us can ignore. What we do about it, that's a bigger question. But I think that if we really wanted to make some changes around that college going rate, I think that we do have to look, it's not the sole piece, but finances can. So the McClure Foundation was a wonderful gift. They extended themselves quite a bit to do it because someone said to me, will they be doing it for this next year? No, this was a huge gift for them and they committed to it for this past year. But I can't speak for the foundation but I don't imagine that this is something that they would do again lightly because it did stretch them but it was an incredibly wonderful gift. Where the McClure Foundation is right now putting out a flyer that I know they're gonna be planning to send to all legislators because it's got some pretty interesting testimonies from students for whom this made a difference on whether they were gonna go to school or not. And it's pretty powerful. So I'm gonna stop there. As you can see, I'm not very passionate about CCV and I can talk forever about this. We haven't talked about workforce. There's tons of things I could talk about but I hope I've given you a little taste. And Senator Campion, there are things that you wish I had mentioned that I haven't. I think that sounds great. I just have, and I can show others have questions but just quickly, how much was the McClure Foundation gift? How much did they give that cover that number of students? So here's the thing, they didn't give us a gift, they guaranteed. So what we did is, so every student, so it was essentially 600 times, it was probably more than $500,000 that they covered. So they essentially said, we will cover this, you bill us. I mean, this is the beauty of philanthropy and people having money and doing with it what they want to do. And so they just said, we're not giving you a set amount but we are guaranteeing to every Vermont high school graduate we will cover your course. So we had 600 and I can't remember, it's like 621. I don't have the exact figure in front of me. Some took three credits, some took a four credit course. So it wasn't just a straight thing. And then we just simply billed them. Okay. So it was the simplicity of it, it was wonderful. And roughly half a million dollars. Yeah, I'd say it was probably a little more than that, but that's just a rough, yeah. Okay, great. Cheryl, Senator Hooker. Yes, thank you, thank you. Thank you, President DeGeneres. Do you know how many of those 600 plus kids went on? Well, that's a perfect question because right now we're gonna monitor that. We're just registering for our spring semester. So our spring semester starts in two weeks. So we will be monitoring that closely because that is an important question in terms of how many of them continue? How many continue this spring? How many continue in the summer? How many continue in the fall? We're very curious about that. So we will be tracking that for us, for the McClure Foundation as well. And I'm sorry, I missed the number of students that CCV has the total number. CCV has, in a given semester, we have more than 5,000 students enrolled. We serve about 10,000 Vermonters a year because we have three big semesters. We have a fall, we have a spring. And then our summer is half again as big as our spring and summer. And so what's interesting about community colleges, as you can imagine, we don't admit a class and they'll be with us for four years. We put out a course list three times a year and people come and they register. So there are some students who continue all, they enroll full time and they're gonna go through and finish in two years. But 80% of our students are part-time and they are in and out. You know, I'm a big believer that, I think one of the big changes in higher ed today, and it was, I think, amplified by COVID. I think we're gonna see, there will always be the Middle Berries and UVMs and Dartmouth of the world where they accept students and they will enroll and plan to be there for four years. But then I think there's a pretty big swath of people who will be enrolling in college, getting a degree, getting a credential, getting a degree, going to work. Coming back. Being passed over by several promotions, I will tell you that is a big motivator. They come back, they get enough education for what they want, they leave again. I just think this in and out. So all the metrics things like graduation rates and retention rates, those aren't so meaningful to community colleges because of our population. There are other things that are incredibly meaningful, but graduation and retention are less important to us than the success rate, for example, when a student registers and pays for a course in January, I wanna make sure they have successfully completed it when they leave. That probably is one of the most important measures for us. I'm a firm believer in education being a lifetime experience and CCD is certainly an entity that adds to that. So thank you. Thank you. Senator Persle. Thank you. President Judy, the information that you gave on the average age in enrollment numbers is that inclusive of the high school enrollees or that's just, that's without them? The average age is with them. Yeah, because that's one of the things that we've released. That has made a difference with the number of students that we're seeing. The average age, I've been at CCD for a while and I will tell you in the 90s, it was so rare for us to see a young student with a parent and I gotta tell you today it is incredibly common. So the average age has dropped down, yep. And you said 18 to 80, but I know you have 17 year olds because I've had a couple. Yeah. I had a couple in your class as well. We had a student who, you know, a highly unusual student. We do allow younger students to come if they, for a variety reasons. I think that this college environment is not for most young students but he will be graduate, he graduated from CCD at the same time and he graduated from high school. It's pretty neat, yeah. You know, you're right on the front lines of, oh, I'm sorry, Senator Lines, did you have your, I'm not checking. I'm not seeing your hand always raised when a. The little yellow hand doesn't work. It just doesn't seem to be working. I don't know. But please go ahead. I know, I'll tell you. No, it's a quick question actually and first of all, thank you for your amazing work at CCV. It has grown so immensely with your leadership just in so many different ways. And we greatly appreciate that. And I can't believe that the 50th was a year ago. It feels like ancient history right now with all the COVID stuff. But my question is, can you talk a little bit about the relationship between our tech schools and students going into CCV and how that sort of sugars off in terms of giving kids another step into a job? Yes, we do a lot with tech centers. And so now I'm gonna get into the weeds a little bit but it will give you a sense. So we think there are really three programs that fall under a broad dual enrollment umbrella. There's a dual enrollment program that is funded by the legislature. So you can take two courses and you can and you come to CCV and you enroll in a CCV course. That's dual enrollment. And that is by far, you know, like in the fall we had I think there were 800 students in straight dual enrollment. Then we have what we say concurrent enrollment where students can, we work with faculty in high schools to offer a college course within the high school. So it's a high school faculty member teaching a college level course in the high school. And those are what they call concurrent courses. The hard part about those is that students on one hand, they get the content but they don't get the experience. They're in with their peers. It's fine, but I will say for me it doesn't do the same thing I want dual enrollment to do. I want people to think of themselves as different because if you've grown up with the same students for 11 years and you're still the class clown you're still the class whatever and you're in with other peers it doesn't give you the same experience. The third option, the third dual enrollment program is a program that we call Fast Forward that we work, it's funded by Carl Perkins funds that come from the feds to the agency of education to CCV. And that's directly for tech center students and tech center programs. And so we work with tech center programs. There are certain programs that have been if they have a qualified faculty member that means they have to have a master's degree because any time CCV does work in a high school whether it's concurrent or Fast Forward we have our creditors make us treat them the same as we would treat any of our standard faculty. So faculty have to have a master's degree they have to go through all the trainings that we require all of that. But so we work individually with tech centers to for some of their courses those students those tech center students get college credit for those. And that is a huge advantage. And so tech, we do a lot of work with tech centers. So in the, I will, I said this form in front of me in the fall in the year of 1920, we had 200 and no 450 students who went through Fast Forward and took it like it's things like early childhood, computer courses. There's a number and it's and it's center by center because it has to it's faculty based because the faculty who is assigned to teach it and is willing they teach to do you'll know this they teach to our essential objectives. They have they have to abide by all of the things that CCV faculty do but also CCV students. So all students have to take assessments. So, so we what we're hoping and what we've hoped with with the Fast Forward is it helps people help students who are in tech centers realize that they too can go to college and that they can leave the tech center with with some college credits. So that's a for us that's a really important population because as we all know, a lot of students who are in the tech centers oftentimes don't think they're going to college oftentimes. There's a lot of first generation students and for those students that's that's a place where we really put a lot of time and effort into that. So thanks for asking that question. Right, you know, and it it certainly does get at the issue around workforce needs. So we have so many right now. Just you mentioned childcare but there's nursing and everything else. Thank you, thank you for that. I don't have any other question at this time. President Judy, you have sort of an interesting frontline perspective on how our high schools are doing because you're seeing students right out of high school. Can you, and I know I've talked to you a little bit about this in the past, but can you tell us how you feel our high schools are doing in terms of preparing students to enter CCB, our, you know, remediation levels? You know, what are you seeing? What are some of the strengths, weaknesses? It kind of goes back to your earlier comment. We have this great high school, you know, completion rate, but, you know, what does that mean? Is does it mean that we are giving, you know, it's a complicated question. Yeah, yeah. And I would say, you know, I want, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pivot to something because I would love to challenge this group to think about this. So we really try to partner with K-12 because, you know, it's easy to point to people and say, you know, students, you didn't prepare students and so, you know, and so one of our issues, and this is why we work so hard with dual enrollment and concurrent enrollment and fast forward is, how do we partner so that high school faculty and people who work in high school know what is expected and what do kids, young people who are going on to college have to, what kind of skills do they have to have? But here's something that I do, I think about this a lot. So, and, you know, right now, and these are just, so if you don't hold me to these figures, but this is just what I have in my head. So right now, Vermont spends about $120 million on our senior year. So if you, and how I got that was, let's just say there are 6,000 students. And again, you know, there's maybe 5,000 now, but let's say it's 6,000 students and we spend $20,000 a year on a student. So, you know, 100 million, give or take. My point is it's a, we spend a lot of money on the senior year. And, you know, my question is, you know, I think we can all point to situations where are we really, our students really getting, you know, $20,000 worth of an education because I think so many times, you know, like I've been a good student and now I only have to get six credits or I only need this or I, you know, it's just, I don't think we have, and this isn't, and this isn't finding fault with K-12. I think this is just who we are. Is it, you know, for the majority of students, I'm just not sure that we offer a really robust senior year. And so I think as a state, do we say, we're gonna commit to a really robust senior year and we're gonna set pretty high expectations for all seniors. Now, because clearly there are exceptions. There are people who are taking really, you know, really difficult courses and taking a really full load, but I also see there's a, you know, a pretty big swath of people that are just on cruise control through their senior year and the state is spending a lot of money. And so are there ways for us to think about the senior year in some different ways and make, and either commit to, we're gonna have a really robust senior year or a bag in the senior year and we're gonna do service or we're gonna do something or we're gonna do something different because I just think the state spends a lot of money. And, you know, I'm a believer that, you know, 16, 17 and 18 year olds, when I was there, you have a certain amount of energy and you're either gonna put it productively or not so productively. And I just think that's a year when we should be challenging people as opposed to and setting pretty high expectations. So if I was gonna wave a wand and really think about something, you know, and it's huge, but I just wonder, is there a way for us to think differently about a senior year holistically? And again, there are individual situations where they're having an amazing experience. So this isn't, and again, this isn't finding fault with K-12, this is just how we've set it up. But I think we could do a lot more. And so that's why like early college is one of those options where I feel like when students, instead of doing senior year, they have opted to have a really rigorous year. And so individuals make those choices. And it's not always about, you know, and this is not, again, this is not about encouraging people to do early college. I think just making sure that there's a rigorous experience for that senior year, because then we launch people, they're going into jobs, they're going into the military, they're going into college. We want them fully prepared as opposed to having a year where they're sort of like hanging out and then they have to get re-engaged. So that's, you know, and I think about that amount of money and could we do stuff, could we think differently about that? Yeah, I know that's exciting to think about, even, you know, are there things that students could start coursework in their junior year and then they continue it at CCV or in another way. You and I talked a little bit last night, you know, civic education and how the country is re-thinking. I'm starting to think of it more as education for a democracy. You know, how do we, what sorts of things are we doing in our schools? CCV, you know, to make sure that students understand the importance of a democracy, you know, how to play a role in a democracy, those kinds of things. Questions, comments? Senator Terenzi. Thanks, Senator Campion. President Judy, nice to meet you first of all. Sort of a question and maybe you can give us the answer and then I can ask this question to other people who come and testimony to this committee, but do you think that things like Homec and Shop and some of these fundamental classes that just are not in high schools any longer that, you know, I got to experience? Do you think putting these courses back in our high schools would prepare these young adults better for a college setting, a community college setting and prepare them better for life in general? Well, I think anytime you can engage students in something that hits their passion, I think it's really important. So do I think putting Homec and Shop are the answers to it? I don't know, but for some students, you know, having those skills is incredibly important. So how do we make sure that students get really practical skills as well as, you know, the more academic enriched programs? You know, I grew up on a farm and, you know, and my family still farms in New Hampshire and, you know, one of the things that, you know, I think about is how do we make sure that we engage? The most important thing I think is, how do you keep kids engaged and touch their passion? And so, you know, to your question, you know, if someone's interested in Shop, it's not about the Shop program, but how do you make sure that that student can build on that passion and that curiosity? And so I think, you know, one of the things that I think is really hard is, you know, we bring kids in in first and second and third grade and think how enthusiastic and curious they are. And how do we keep that going as opposed to, you know, going the other way? And so I think that for us as educators, the most important thing is how do you connect with students and how do you speak to their passion? Because you can teach as much math as you can in a class if you're in taking home math or taking Shop. You know, how do you, what's the context that you use to teach those skills? So I don't know the answer to your question, except I do know that if we don't keep students engaged and work on their passions, we've lost them. Does that help? Thank you. Yeah, that's a great response. Thank you. Anything else for President Judy? Senator Hooker, please. Just one more question about the early college and that's been in effect for a few years. And can you give us the data on that as far as and have you tracked whether or not these students have gone on and continued and received a degree or credentials or whatever? I can tell you the place that we, where we are tracking is that, so the class of 1819, so this is, I just have this much. I didn't, because when I would talk to Senator Campion last night, I was like, okay, like I need to get some pieces of data, but 71% of the students who were enrolled in early college in 1819 continued on the very next semester, so they kept going. And that's a pretty high percentage. And so we, now what we haven't found, what we haven't gone back is okay, did the remaining 20, 30% continue after a semester or two. So we just looked at did the, how many of the early college students just continued straight on? So we feel like that the continuation rate, and that's a much higher retention rate than you will find for most students going between their freshman and sophomore year with the population that are a lot, first generation and many low income students. So we were particularly pleased about that, but we, the longitudinal data is stuff that we, we have to get that from the clearinghouse. And so you have to, it takes a little bit. Okay, so- But it's a very good question. To know whether or not they've gone on even beyond that first year after is something- That's what we don't have that data. The other piece I will say, and I don't have it in front of me, but I do know that we have trapped the number of students who take dual enrollment course and then take a course, go on to college. It's a very high number, but I don't have that rate in front of me. Now, some people would say, well, those are students that were inclined to go to college anyway, but factoring that out, the fact that we do see a lot of students who take dual enrollment go on, it's, if we start going the other way, that would be a bigger problem. I also remember a course that CCV offered for seniors that was kind of a preparing to go to college. Is that still in place? Yes, and but now, thank you for asking that. We have a course called Introduction to College Studies, or now it's called Introduction to College and Careers, because when dual enrollment came, it used to be, as Senator Hooker remembers, it was for high school juniors and seniors, but we didn't have dual enrollment. And so we had, when dual enrollment came along, we said, okay, we're gonna make that course available to high school freshmen and sophomores. And so now, and this is money, we run this course totally with support from VSAC and philanthropists. So this does not, and we usually run a few hundred students go through that course every year, but it's really intended to prepare students to take a college course. And the difference is, is it for, probably for many of us, you know, your families understood college, you knew the process, you knew how to apply to, you knew what financial aid was, you knew that financial aid was an option, you knew all those things. But for so many students, this is like a foreign language. And so introduction to college and careers focuses on sort of the language of college. How do you get through that process? Also, how do I apply for financial aid? And then we've added a pretty strong career component. So people do a lot of career exploration in that. And again, I'm not necessarily one, that you have to like decide early on what you're gonna do. But you should, but I do believe if you have a direction, you're much more likely to stay focused if you have a direction. But I always say to students, but it's okay to change. My undergraduate degree was in animal science. So I rest my case, you know? You can change, but it's the level of education. And you learn to read and write and stay in a context that's really important. Thank you. Great. Thank you. And we're going to have President Judy back next week with Brian Prescott and Senator Bruce, all of whom were involved with on the select committee of higher education, which looks at higher education in general in Vermont with a specific look to CCB in the state colleges. And so we'll be hearing more from President Judy next week. Please. Senator Campion, can I just say one last thing? I know that Chancellor Zanatni is gonna follow me and I wanna make sure, I realized probably through my whole thing, I haven't really talked very much about that CCB is part of the Vermont State College System. And we do a lot of work, particularly with Vermont Technical College in terms of students starting with us and transferring, particularly in the allied health field, just a quick figure, 70% of VTC graduates, nursing graduates, I mean, I don't have the latest figure, but two years ago, 70% of them had started at CCB. So we are, I always think of us where the open end of the funnel and help people realize that they can do college, get started and then continue on. And so we're really grateful to the relationship we have with the other schools. Right. So thank you. Thank you. And we'll see you again next week. Yes. Okay. Terrific. Thank you. Okay. We'll just take a five minute break and then Chancellor Zanatni, we'll have you in just five minutes. Okay. Terrific. Thank you. We're grateful to have you here. Welcome back everyone. We know that the state colleges are going through a transition, if you will, experiencing some difficult times, but also experiencing some successes, I suspect out there as well at the institutions themselves. What we thought we might do today, and as I think you heard me mention before President Judy finished her testimony, we'll be hearing next week from the select committee on higher education with their recommendations for the state colleges, how sort of assessing the state of where they're at today, how we might continue in the state having them a part of our landscape. So for you to come in today is terrific to give us, it would be wonderful to hear a little bit about yourself as well as the state colleges themselves, how things are going in this COVID landscape, if you will, and anything else that you think we need to know about the state institutions. And one of the things I'm sure you'll include, but if you would just remind us which institutions comprise what we refer to as the state colleges, as President Judy reminded us that CCV is part of the state colleges, and therefore I would suspect when we talk about appropriating funds to the state colleges, we were talking about an amount that goes to CCV as well as the institutions that you're gonna talk about now. So with that, I also wanna welcome Catherine LaVecere, formerly the Chief of Staff for the Speaker of the House and in a new role here which is just terrific. So glad you're here as well, Catherine. Thank you. We do have some slides. So Catherine's going to manage the slides for me as I go through this. So again, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you all today and to give you an update on the Vermont State Colleges System and our COVID-19 response. So just going to Senator Campion's first question there, you can see on the slide the four institutions that make up the Vermont State Colleges System. So Northern Vermont University which was created a couple of years ago from Johnson State College and Linden State College, then Castleton University, the Community College of Vermont and Vermont Technical College. As you may know, we have a new leadership team at the Vermont State College System. For the record, I'm Sophie Sadatni. I'm the Chancellor of the system. I've been serving in this role since last summer. I was previously the General Counsel for the system. I've been with the system since August, 2014. Joining me today in the background is Catherine, as you know. She's our Director of External and Governmental Affairs and she's new to our team. She joined us this fall and we're obviously thrilled to have her as part of our team. So I just wanted to take a few minutes of your time at the beginning to share with you who we are and what we do and then provide a brief update on our ongoing system-wide transformation. So there are three key points that I would like you to take away from today. The first is that the Vermont State Colleges are key to Vermont's success. And I think some of that was illustrated by the testimony that you just heard from President Joyce Judy. Second, we are in the middle of significant transformation. That is being guided by the work of the legislature select committee on the future of public higher education in Vermont. And again, I do understand you're gonna get more information about that next week. And third, we do serve more Vermonters than other institutions across the state. And we believe that Vermonters need more from the Vermont State Colleges moving forward. They need better access to continue their education, more affordable and flexible options and more high quality opportunities that will help them succeed in life and do better to deliver for Vermont. So we've been serving Vermonters and Vermont communities for over 200 years. We exist for the benefit of Vermont and we're working hard to do more and do better to deliver for Vermont and the Vermonters that we serve. So as you know, COVID-19 has created both a public health crisis and an economic one. And it has worsened our already significant and unsustainable structural deficit. So we already had a structural deficit prior to COVID, but the pandemic has certainly put us in a more challenging financial position than we were previously. Like the state, we have a position of extreme uncertainty regarding our revenue for next year. Our budget about 78 to 80% of our revenue comes from students through tuition, room and board and fees. So given the challenges of the pandemic, it does make predicting enrollment extremely hard. And again, because if we don't know what the enrollment's going to be, it really has an impact on our ability to estimate what our revenues will be for the year ahead. Even though we're facing significant challenges this year, resulting from the public health crisis and coupled with the structural deficit, we are committed to delivering for Vermonters. And especially now that the pandemic has increased the need for the services we provide in our host communities. So some examples of the ways that the Vermont State colleges have been there for our neighbors during the pandemic include that at the start of the pandemic, we installed free community Wi-Fi hotspots in the parking lots of our residential colleges to help Vermonters work and learn remotely, particularly for those who didn't have access to broadband. We hosted food banks and other related activities such as weekly community meals. We maintained access to Vermont Text Dental Clinic, which primarily serves low income Vermonters without dental insurance. Our student teachers continued to serve in placements across the state in pre-K to 12 schools. And we also stood up a 2.3 million CRF workforce initiative that was established by the legislature to provide free classes and trainings for Vermonters across all four of our institutions. And 971 Vermonters whose employment had been affected by the pandemic were able to take nearly 1400 classes and trainings thanks to the investment from the state. Notwithstanding the challenges, the Vermont State College system is essential to Vermont's economy and our state's future. Our mission starts with the phrase with the benefit of Vermont and we do take that mission very seriously. We have facilities and academic centers within 25 miles of nearly every Vermonter and the Vermont State College system is deeply rooted in every region of the state. The heat map on this slide shows where our students come from. It is very easy to fall into the trap of assuming that every college student comes from a stable middle income family. That every student has a home to go to when residence halls shut down due to a pandemic and that every student can afford a residential four-year experience. And while we do serve many of those students, the reality is that the Vermont State Colleges serves all Vermonters. And again, I think from the testimony that you just heard from President Judy, you got a sense for the scope of some of the students that we serve. So this means that first generation students for whom a degree or credential isn't accessible unless they can commute to school after work like Jessica Malski's who shares that being a first generation student means you may have to work while attending school and you may have to face daunting tasks like completing the FAFSA on your own. We're able to accommodate them within our system and our students' lives are complicated. We have new Americans, Vermonters recovering from addiction and Vermonters who were unable to make it at a traditional four-year college. There are Vermonters who barely made it out of high school and then years later realized the dream of a college education in moving their lives forward. And that's for an example, we have Jeff Patterson who didn't find success at a traditional four-year institution, but he started over at the Community College of Vermont and he ultimately earned a bachelor's degree. We have Vermonters who have a chance to change their lives and break the cycle of poverty for their families because they have access to a Vermont State College. And we serve Vermonters who need a second chance. So for example, Kyle Wolf overcame a substance use disorder and incarceration and used his experiences as motivation to pursue higher education and help others. Kyle graduated from CCV with an associate degree in human services and is currently pursuing a degree in social work at Carselton. Vermonters returning from military service find a home at the Vermont State Colleges and we have a strong reputation for being veteran friendly as Sean Connolly shares here. Sean found the transition from the Army to college challenging and CCV in Vermont Tech eased his transition. We serve Vermonters from rural communities whose local Vermont State College makes higher education accessible. Rachel Burt found success at Vermont Tech in the dairy farm management program even though she thought that getting a degree would be overwhelming and exhausting. She's now immersed in the two plus two program and sees Vermont Tech as a step forward to the rest of her life. So these are just a few of the stories of who our students are and how we change their lives. And while the Vermont State College system primarily serves Vermonters, we do have many students that cross borders to commute or attend a Vermont State College system school as shown on this heat map. Educating over 10,000 Vermonters each year, our campuses are centers of academic excellence, culture and community. Most importantly, 83% of our students are Vermonters. We educate more Vermonters annually than all other institutions of higher education in the state combined. And two thirds of our alumni live and work in Vermont. This past year, more than 1800 Vermonters graduated from our colleges and universities with degrees and certificates and entered the workforce. This fall, we have almost 3,300 first generation college students enrolled in the system and we're educating almost 3,000 low income undergraduate students. The Vermont State College system is the economic anchor that creates opportunities for vulnerable Vermonters. We create pathways to affordable certificates, degrees and credentials and provide economic stability in the rural regions of the state where our colleges and universities are large employers and service community hubs. For over 200 years, the institutions of the Vermont State Colleges have filled an important role in our state, providing access to high quality post-secondary education to students of all ages, all income levels and all backgrounds. So while we shared a couple of those stories with you today, there are thousands more. The Vermont State Colleges are economic anchors for the state and our host communities and we employ nearly 3,800 people. As you can see here, our employees live in every county of the state including in the communities you serve. As a state college system, we're among the largest employers in the state next to the state of Vermont, the University of Vermont, the state's largest hospitals and some of the largest businesses. And regionally, our colleges stack up as large employers as well, employing hundreds of Vermonters in our anchor communities. We offer competitive wages and benefits and are a significant employer from Vermonters of all educational attainments. Additionally, our top enrolled programs align well with Vermont's workforce needs and that includes mental health professionals, childcare providers, entrepreneurs, educators and healthcare professionals. So while the importance of the Vermont State College system to Vermonters is undeniable, the VSC does face significant challenges if it's to continue to meet the needs of Vermont and its students in the future. We've been affected by demographic and market challenges and these have been amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. With several campuses operating online only this fall, a steep drop in enrollment and increasing operating costs, the VSC is in a challenging financial position. We did receive significant bridge funding and CRF dollars this year from the legislature for which we're incredibly grateful. And with the bridge funding, the legislature also established the select committee on the future of public higher education in Vermont. And the charge to that committee was, quote, to assist the state of Vermont in addressing the urgent needs of the Vermont State Colleges and develop an integrated vision and plan for a high quality affordable and workforce connected future for public higher education in the state. So we have embraced that message that transformation must happen at the Vermont State Colleges and we are taking needed initial action both in the chancellor's office and at our member institutions. We're continuing to work on initiatives to contain costs and to function more as a consolidated system and less as a federation. The work is ongoing and essential as we do our part to transform the Vermont State Colleges for the benefit of Vermont. And as we do this internal work, we will be working and looking at the direction given to us by the select committee and our board of directors, our board of trustees, I should say. Transformation will be achieved on many levels. And with that in mind, I want you to know that the board of trustees recently adopted a set of strategic priorities. The VSC is committed to becoming a fully integrated system that achieves financial stability in a responsible and sustainable way. The strategic priorities are focused in four key areas, affordability, accessibility, quality of academic programs and relevance of programs and embedded within each of those strategic priorities is an intentional focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. We look to partner with the legislature as we collectively work to stabilize the system and prepare to build a better, stronger and more sustainable future for Vermont. Our goal is to achieve transformation in a transparent, fiscally responsible and thoughtful manner that enables us to continue fulfilling our mission. In addition to moving towards a system-wide budgeting process, our ongoing work to transform the Vermont State Colleges for the benefit of Vermont includes the development of a system-wide website of online and remote course listings so that students can more easily identify programs that fit their needs, reducing competition and increasing collaboration between our colleges, including in admissions and financial aid awards, expanding a successful virtual library model to serve the entire system, analyzing our expensive software needs to ensure we're getting our return on investment and identifying further opportunities for program collaboration across the system. Just briefly, on December 4th, the select committee released their initial report. The report contains several recommendations that the board is currently considering. The main recommendations include a common accreditation for the three residential colleges, so that's Vermont Technical College, Northern Vermont University and Castleton University. And then the important with that, just to emphasize this because I know there's some confusion around it, the select committee is recommending that we maintain the physical presence that we currently have. So they're talking about a common accreditation for three colleges, they're not talking about shuttering campuses in their proposal. The administrative consolidation of services is something else that we're looking at, such as financial aid, marketing and admissions. The select committee also recommends a significant restructuring of our budget that includes steps to reduce our structural deficit coupled with an increase in the base appropriation that we receive from the state. And they're looking at accomplishing this incrementally over five years. We are in the process of mapping out what this would look like for the Vermont State Colleges and we're working with our board on how to address these recommendations. The next select committee report is due to the legislature on February 12th and the final report is due April 16th. But I just want to be clear based on the first initial report that we have, we are moving forward with exploring and investigating the recommendations that are in the initial report. It's clear that we must innovate if we are to continue to fulfill our mission and transformation will be achieved on many levels. So we're looking at the select committee and it's coming reports to guide us as we shape our future. We're looking to direction from the governor, the legislature and the select committee as to our next steps. And we're working closely with senators Kitchell, Baruth and the Senate pro tem. We're also working hard internally to streamline the state college system to better serve Vermont and Vermonters. And we have been and will continue to be in close and frequent contact with our union partners, our staff and faculty as we navigate the path ahead. Again, undertaking this work in the middle of a pandemic is incredibly challenging. And so with that in mind, I just want to take a few minutes to update you on the work that we're doing to address COVID-19 pandemic and to make sure that our campuses are safe for our students and employees. So with the exception of CCV, I'll explain that in a second, but with the exception of CCV, our colleges have worked closely with the governor's restart team and the Department of Health in developing mandatory guidance that's applicable to all colleges and universities in the state of Vermont. CCV has been exempted from the state's mandatory guidance because their classes have been taught exclusively online. Their students are all commuters and there's no residential capacity at CCV and their employees have been working remotely to the maximum extent possible. So the comments I'm going to provide now pertain to the other three institutions. So looking back to the fall semester, we had a successful semester. We concluded in-person courses at Thanksgiving and sent students home and then the remainder of the semester was completed online. We had good compliance with the mandatory guidance issued by the administration and with the college's individual institutional policies. Those students and employees who failed to comply were disciplined. We provided data on the number of COVID violations and students removed from campus each week along with data from other Vermont colleges and universities and that weekly data was provided to the administration. In the fall, we had the total number of positive cases we had for students and employees were 11 at Northern Vermont University, 11 at Vermont Technical College and three at Carselton. Many of those occurred at the very tail end of the semester and were the results of community contacts and not due to an outbreak or cluster at any of the individual institutions. Looking ahead to this spring semester, the start of the semester has been delayed to February 1st. We will be providing flexible course offerings across the system. And again, Joyce Judy mentioned some of these but online asynchronous courses, online synchronous courses, hybrid courses, telepresence, accelerated programs as well as face-to-face instruction. So CCV will continue to provide their instruction remotely. NVU is planning to continue to provide a mixture of both in-person, online and hybrid instruction which they did in the fall quite successfully. Vermont Tech is going to continue with their approach from the fall which was a low residency approach. Most of the instruction at Vermont Technical College was provided online but they had intensive lab week classes. So they had a small number of students who resided on campus full time and then they offered residential for the lab weeks. And again, many of the students simply commuted but there was an option for students to reside periodically while they did their labs. Castleton was fully online in the fall and had some students residing on campus. They're going to be switching this spring more to the Northern Vermont University model of providing a combination of both in-person and online courses. With respect to testing, the colleges again are following the mandatory guidance that's been issued by the administration. The most recent round of guidance was the updated guidance came out in December and that provides for testing day zero and day seven. One change for the spring compared to last fall is that now all students must quarantine. Previously, students were not required to do so if they lived in Vermont or were coming from a safe county but that's something that has now shifted with the more recent upsurge in cases. All three of our residential colleges are using Broad for their testing. They have contracted for 17,400 tests for the spring semester with only one exception in the fall. All the test results were provided within 24 hours by Broad. Vermont Tech also has a separate contract to provide tests through another provider, a smaller number of tests. Weekly testing is available to campus-based community members at NVU. All three colleges will be doing monthly surveillance testing and athletes, those that are going to be competing, there's a more rigorous requirement for them and they're required to be tested three times a week. All students and those employees who are working on campus are required to complete daily symptom checks. As far as quarantine housing goes, again, the residential colleges all meet the requirements set forth in the mandatory guidance. Residence halls have been set aside for quarantine and isolation. One of the unfortunate side effects of having a lower enrollment is that we do have plenty of space to manage quarantine and isolation as needed. We've been able to provide food and support to students that are in quarantine or isolation, working with our Sodexo, who's our dining hall vendor. He had been a great partner for us in managing that. The cleaning is typically provided by our own staff, but when needed, specialized cleaning is provided by outside contractors. So for example, if we did have a student that was in isolation, we would contract to have specialized cleaning services provided for that. One of the other questions with regard to the new guidance that's come out is the definition of households. Northern Vermont University in the Castleton have each designated residence halls as a household. And that means that students will not be allowed to socialize with students in other residence halls. And they will be following up and making sure that that's abided by Vermont technical colleges still deciding exactly how they're going to define what constitutes a household. All COVID mitigation strategies must be followed outside of a dorm room or personal office space. So that involves mask wearing, social distancing, et cetera. Employees have been encouraged to work remotely to the extent reasonably possible. Obviously we have some employees who are required to be physically present on campus such as our public safety officers, folks that work face-to-face with students. But anyone that can work remotely has been encouraged to do so and we've been providing the necessary support to those employees who are working remotely. We provided the federal families first coronavirus relief at leave to our employees. We do have generous leave policies and we have allowed employees to run a negative leave balance as a way to avoid laying off or following employees as a result of the pandemic. Obviously some of that could change if the virus worsens or the state's rules change. If we get to a point where we had to be, for example, totally online and maybe there would be some impact on our staff. But right now we've been successful in finding work for employees and keeping them working through the pandemic to date. So again, thank you so much to you and to all the legislators but for the encouragement and ongoing support that you've shown the Vermont State Colleges over the years. And we particularly want to thank you for the bridge funding that we did receive for the FY21 budget and the CRF funding we received, particularly the funding for the workforce initiative. We're very passionate about keeping students at the center of our work as we move forward and the initiative that was provided for workforce enabled us to provide upskilling, rescaling programs to almost a thousand Vermonters at a time of great uncertainty and need. And that's something that we enjoyed doing and were happy to be able to do. So if you have any questions, I'd be more than happy to answer any you may have. Terrific, thank you. Very informative. Again, we'll be jumping in next week even further on our state colleges. But for now, any immediate questions or comments? Questions in general? Oh, Senator Hooker. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chancellor, could you describe common accreditation for me, please? Yes. Yes. So all of our institutions are accredited by the New England Commission on Higher Education, also known as NETCHI. So a common accreditation would mean rather than the three institutions having to meet all the accreditation requirements and there are standards that are set forth by NETCHI. But instead of having to meet them all individually, they would meet them as a combined entity. So for example, you have to have your own chief financial officer, but instead of each institution having their own president, their own chief financial officer, they could have one for the combined entity. And then there are other standards around, academic standards, financial standards, et cetera. So it would just mean that we could meet those accreditation standards combining the three institutions. One of the other benefits is really quality of programs for students. So right now, we have relatively, we have small colleges spread out across the state. So one of the benefits would be that we would be able to work more collaboratively across the individual institutions and then provide better, richer, stronger quality, higher quality programs to the students because they would have access to faculty at more than just their institution. So there are some benefits. I do want to make clear, I mean, this is something that, and you'll ask questions next week, I'm sure, when you talk to folks about the select committee process, it definitely would result in savings in the long run, but a common accreditation wouldn't result in immediate savings. So for example, when we combined Johnson and Linden into Northern Vermont University, we have realized about $9 million worth of savings from that consolidation, but the real benefit comes not so much from savings, but is what you can accomplish. Once your one combined entity, the administrative consolidations become a lot easier. It eliminates the competition between the institutions. It enables you to come up with a more effective way of delivering services at a lower cost to the students. So I just want to be, common accreditation by itself is not a magic bullet, I think is what I'm trying to communicate to you. Thank you. Senator Chen. Chancellor Zadani, it's nice to sort of meet you. I believe I know your spouse and president Sullivan speaks very highly of you. So- Oh, thank you. I work at UVM. I bleed green and gold and I like to say, and something I offered at our opening education committee meeting that I just want to hear your thoughts while we're here. As I look to the Vermont State Colleges and the University of Vermont, I keep thinking of the same type of recommendations that we're seeing in this initial report from the select committee, looking for what you were just speaking about, the savings and back office efficiencies through consolidation and coordination of services. And I keep thinking of other states and how the SUNY system or the UMass system or the UC system, I'm just wondering what are your thoughts? And I have read the report, and I saw teasers about ways that UVM and VSC could work better together. But what are your general broad stroke thoughts about the notions of trying to incentivize and have the University of Vermont and Vermont State College not merge, but incentivize them to find ways both in the back office to look for those same efficiencies you just spoke about so that we can extend our proven excellence in certain areas to each other, mutually support our higher education needs in the state while simultaneously building off the successes of CCV with the articulation agreements, looking for pathways and supporting pathways so that like you just said, less competition and more collaboration between the great institution of the University of Vermont and the great institutions of the Vermont State Colleges. Do you have any broad stroke thoughts or reactions? Is that a terribly naive notion for me to be constantly raising in these discussions? So I think a couple of things. One, I think it's really important to understand there is a lot of collaboration that already happens informally and I actually have reached out to our presidents to kind of ask them to give me the sort of list, the top sort of few things that they do. I know for example, there's work that's going on between Vermont Technical College, that agricultural program and UVM. I mean, there's overlap there. So I know there's a number of ways in which we already work together on things. I do know legislatively that a couple of, I'm probably, I may not have the exact times, but a couple of years ago, UVM and the Vermont State Colleges were asked to take a look at some of the back office pieces, for example, healthcare and things like that. And at the time it was determined that it would actually be extremely costly and challenging to do it. Unfortunately, we have very different healthcare. We use a different learning management system. We have a different people management, payroll system. So a lot of those things we have obviously in common within the Vermont State College system. So we can build on that internally, but I think it would be a challenge to do some of those. I mean, it would be expensive and very disruptive in the short run to do that with UVM. You know, in the long run, maybe it would, the long, long run it might pay off, but that's my sense of where those explorations by the legislature has gone in the past. I certainly think there are openings. We right now, one of the things I mentioned was we're looking at doing a system-wide virtual library and we have a very successful model that the Community College of Vermont and Vermont Technical College currently have. And we're looking at expanding that to Northern Vermont University and to Castleton University. But as part of that, the team that's looking at it has reached out to the library folk at the University of Vermont to see if there's a way we can share subscriptions to databases, for example. So we definitely are open and I believe President Garamalla is as well, but we're definitely open to looking at ways where we can get some economies of scale on things like that. You know, and certainly in the short term, those are things we can explore. I think the other, the bigger back office things would be a much bigger project and would require a lot more exploration. Chancellor, you're planning on, I'm sorry, Senator Tinden, do you have a follow-up? So it sounds like you are working toward collaborating on things like admissions or at least sharing resources. So are you envisioning, for example, possibly an admissions office that would represent each of the state colleges? So under the select committee's recommendation, they're recommending that CCV remains separate and that these other three institutions have a common accreditation. So I think it would be, it would make sense for us to have a common, obviously a common admissions office, which could be, it doesn't have to be centralized. I want to make that clear as well. Everything doesn't have to all be in one place as we've learned through COVID. We can be, have centralized functions, but be dispersed geographically. I don't think it would make sense to have the same admissions office for CCV, for example, because for some of the reasons that President Judy just referenced, I mean, they're on a different schedule. Their calendar isn't aligned. The academic calendar for the three residential colleges, we've now just recently this year, we're just moving to having one common academic calendar. But again, CCV is quite different. They really have the three separate semesters. They register at different times. They have a different, a very different model. I think the students, although there's significant overlap, the way they reach out to students is very different than the traditional, the traditional, more traditional four-year programs. There you are recruiting for a four-year program. Again, we do have associates degrees at VTC as well, but that's just a very different model than recruiting semester by semester at a community college. So I could certainly see having, but again, there could be common, there still could be benefits from being within a system of having alignment between the admissions of a combined entity and CCV because I think one of the key things is we want to make sure people come in the right door. And we do have students that maybe started a four-year college and aren't quite ready for it, that maybe it would be better for them to start at CCV and then progress up to coming to one of the four-year colleges. So I think having some alignment between the admissions focus is important to make sure we do get people in, into the system in the right place and find the right program for them. Thanks. The reason I raise admissions is it seems to me from where I'm sitting, admissions is going to be one of the biggest challenges. I may be wrong, but looking at what's happening around us I represent Bennington County and I live in the town of Bennington just over the border is Hudson Valley Community College which Cuomo and others are moving in the direction of lowering and lowering tuition costs and where students can do everything now from study English lit to becoming an undertaker. I mean, it's becoming more affordable. And then on the other side, you have spots like Southern New Hampshire, I think it's Southern New Hampshire University which also is keeping a lot of its students. And I mentioned Hudson Valley and Southern Vermont, Southern New Hampshire, it's because historically, as I understand it, at least in the Albany area and also parts of New Hampshire, we would get those students to a Castleton in particular from Albany and Lyndon and Johnson. And so I just see it as it is going to be a challenge especially as governors and other states can lower the tuition costs because they have the dollars. And so I do see admissions. And I would also say philanthropy is perhaps another area where there's some kind of merger not merger, but the collaboration amongst all of you. But the admissions I think is perhaps from where I am going to be a great challenge. Also, I have to say, if you look at the independent colleges, we're going to be hearing a little bit from them tomorrow, but I know that they are trying to make certain that students don't leave with a lot of debt. Not all of them, but I know Bennington College well, we try to make sure that students after four years don't leave with much debt. So there's competition I think with the others as well. So to me, it just seems like one of the biggest challenges ahead. Right, so just to live back on a couple of those things. So you're right, we're in a very ruthlessly competitive market and we're in the Northeast. So just as we have demographic challenges here in Vermont, we're not alone, Northeast has them. And certainly Maine has been very aggressive in reaching out to other surrounding states and saying, we'll match your in-state tuition. Again, those states other than New Hampshire generally have funded at a much higher rate than we've been historically, but it does make us a challenge for us to compete with them. I think on admissions, one of the benefits of moving towards a common accreditation and greater administrative consolidation is that we eliminate some of our internal competition. It's because right now, we're kind of competing against each other and that doesn't really make any sense, particularly for students that can afford to pay more to then be undercutting each other just doesn't really make a lot of sense. On the philanthropy piece, I think there's room to explore things there. I will say one of the challenge we have as a system is it's hard to raise money at the system level because people have no emotional attachment to the Vermont State College system. They went to or are affiliated with an individual institution. So that's one of those pieces. And on the affordability issue, that is really important to us. We are very concerned about that. I mean, to me, the worst case of all outcomes is to have somebody come, incur debt and then leave with nothing. So one of the things that we really have focused on, and again, you heard some of it from President Judy, but really having a number of off-ramps so students can start and then they can get a certificate and then they can get an associate's degree and then a bachelor's degree, but they're building towards getting degrees. So they're not going to be leaving with nothing. If they leave and they don't complete, they at least leave with something. And I think it was Senator Hooker that said about a lifetime of education. I do believe that we need to rethink higher education. It's not just traditional 18 to 22 year olds and four years that people will be dipping in and out through their lifetime. And we need to be ready and prepared and able to meet that need. So we are really focused on that. Affordability is key. We do believe, so although we have the demographic challenges in Vermont, we definitely have an affordability issue in Vermont too and that's something that is in the, but it's, I don't know if it's not in detail in the initial report that you've probably seen from the select committee, but in the draft, the next version, they're proposing an affordability standard and that's something for the state to look at. You know, the legislature to look at as we move forward, but we are very concerned about affordability. We did make the decision to freeze tuition for this coming year. So even though we are facing a very challenging financial picture, it just seemed really hard given everything that's been going on with a lot of online instruction, et cetera, to be expecting students to face a 3% tuition increase or something for next, for FY22. So we have frozen tuition across the board for FY22 coming up. Perfect. My final question and then I'll pass it on to others is along the good point that you made around competition, it seems as though you do have majors, correct, that overlap, like for example, can you study English at Castleton and Northern University? And in that way, I wonder if it makes kind of sense. And again, I'll leave it to those who know everything about the whole system and are looking at it more holistically, but I would just raise that also. Does it make sense to have duplication of majors? Can you come into this state and study history at the same kind of history, if you will, a general history degree at two universities or like Castleton and Northern, or are they very unique in that way in terms of curriculum? So not the things you mentioned. So English and history, et cetera, are not particularly unique. I'll just quickly say education, for example, is. So we do have education programs at Northern Vermont University and at Castleton, and those are very sort of unique to each institution. But as far as history and English and other programs go, we've actually been looking at that. We had an internal task force called the VSCS Forward Task Force that was created in the summer. They came up with four strong recommendations that went to our board and were adopted by our board. And one of them was to really focus on duplication of programs between Northern Vermont University and Castleton University in particular. Vermont Tech obviously has much more unique programming that's somewhat different. And so there were a number of, a committee was put together, the academic deans, faculty to sort of think through those issues. We currently, given the proposal from the select committee of now including Vermont Technical College as a possible combined entity, we've expanded that work to sort of think about duplicate programs. And we currently are looking at working with it, we're looking to hire, we have an RFP out, but work with an external consultant to really think through if we had a combined, emerged common accreditation for the three institutions, what programs should we be delivering and where should we be delivering them? So we are very focused on that. I will say in the short term, we have a number of faculty who have really stepped up in this area. And this semester we have, for example, math faculty at Northern Vermont University and at Castleton that will be teaching students from the other institutions. So NVU math professors also teaching Castleton students and vice versa. The business faculty are doing the same thing and I believe there's an archeology course at Castleton that will be made available to students at NVU as well. So effectively, the faculty member will be in the classroom at NVU, but we'll have students participating remotely, but being part of the class but remotely from Castleton. So they're really, we have a lot of faculty that have really understood the message and are working together. And again, that really benefits students because some of the programs, we only have from political science, we have one political science, faculty member at Northern Vermont University and one at Castleton. So you're not getting as rich an experience as if you have access to multiple faculty members in a particular subject area. So I think there are real benefits for our students to have access to faculty and programs at other institutions. Other questions? Yes, Senator Chandler. So there again, I'm just gonna be a barking dog on this. To what you just said, Chancellor Zadattany, it seems to me that I'd love to foster ways to have UVM open up some of its available seats to VSC students so that the VSC doesn't need to stand up a Russian program or a German program or a geology program if that's what we're talking about. And that way they could take those courses through articulation agreements, trusted curriculum and so on. We used to have the Z-section set. I work at the University of Vermont. So I offer this as a part of our continuing ed program would have reserved seats for each courses. I'd love to see a world where the University of Vermont working with the Vermont State Colleges has that especially with all the technologies that have been thrust upon us over the last year in this pandemic to find ways that VSC students can access the same curriculum that they're qualified to take in similar fashions that we see successful in other states like our neighbors, the SUNY system and so on. I'm just gonna keep talking about how VSC and UVM can work together for as long as the voters put me in here. So I hope I'm not annoying you, Lewis, this line of thought. Other questions? Yes, Senator Lines. I was just gonna say thank you and Senator Chittenden has expressed my feelings as well so I don't have to ask a question. And particular, the geology program is a significant loss because we don't really have the state geologist and we need some groundwater mapping and other things that are so critical. What a shame. Anyway, thank you for your work. And it's a pleasure to have you here and to meet you. Oh, thank you. Senator Hooker. Just a quick question on enrollment for the spring when the kids come back in February, what's that gonna look like as far as percentage of the student body that left? How many of them are actually coming back to campus? I don't actually have that information right now. We can certainly get it to you. We have a board meeting coming up on Friday and the presidents will be sharing information about what they're seeing for enrollment on Friday. So I know it's coming, I just don't, I don't have it to give to you right now I'm afraid but we can get that to you. Thank you. And I would just follow up on Senator Chitenden's point too is that, and I again, to build off on what President Joyce Judy was saying, a lot of students are well served by online if it's well done. And I think we can tell that particularly through CCV because they went exclusively online. And some of those students are ones that maybe, you would think would face the greatest challenges with doing courses online. So I think offering a range of things and having options. I mean, we do know that we have students that are a much better served in-person. So I do think looking forward, it will be that combination of having online options available for flexibility and whatever but also having the in-person, I think that will be what the future will look like for a higher, everywhere. I mean, not just for us, but everywhere. Anything else? Well, thank you. Lively, terrific conversation. Chancellor, thank you so much for being with us. Please know you're always welcome to be here whenever you'd like to be. And of course, next week, as you know, as we hear this report, it might be something that you might want to be a part of and just please know you have an open invitation. It's great to have you here with us and great to see Catherine again as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. And just to let you know, I mean, we are, again, we are working, our board is reviewing the Select Committee's recommendations and has asked us to really explore what would that look like? How long could it take and things like that? So we have not made any final decisions because it's too early to do that but we are fully vetting what's being proposed by the Select Committee. And if you would, maybe through Catherine, can just keep us updated a bit and then we can have you back at an appropriate time as well, just to hear your thinking on things as you vet it. I'm happy to do that. Thank you very much. Thank you. So committee, that is it for the day. We have busy days tomorrow, you know, until about the same time tomorrow as well as Friday and working on next week's schedule as well, pretty much again, trying to get introductions out there, get updates on COVID and what's happening on the ground, as well as going through all of your priorities and the questions that you put forward yesterday when we've had that round table, things that you were interested in knowing and topics that you're interested in hearing from people on. Any final questions or comments before we all see each other tomorrow? And we'll leave it there. Thanks everybody. Great, great day. Thank you. Bye bye, thank you.