 Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Senate Education. It's Thursday, April 15th at 1.37 p.m. We are going to start by, actually, our first two priorities have to do with the State Board of Education. We have Senator Rom and Representative Christie with us to help us work on the language that we worked on yesterday as it relates to diversifying the State Board. We then have two of the governor's appointments, Mr. Lovett and Mr. Jepsen, both with us for their hearing to join the State Board. And then later in the afternoon, we'll return to S114 and Mr. Demeray will take us through the House changes to our literacy bill. And we'll also hear from the Secretary, Secretary French and Ms. Myers on their feedback as to where we are at with that. So we don't have Ledge Council at this moment, but I believe Senator Rom, welcome. Representative Christie, welcome. Good to see both of you. We appreciate you being here. I didn't realize that Senator Rom is the co-chair of the Social Equity Caucus. So great having you with us. Representative Christie, can you hear us okay? I think he's still, I can tell you as his co-chair in the Social Equity Caucus, he has some technical difficulties sometimes just with the head side and the Hartford connection. So let's take a moment. So why don't we start with you, Senator Rom? I believe Jeannie sent you some language last evening. And let me see. I think it is up on our website as well. We all just wanna get there. This is language that we worked on yesterday afternoon. And again, as just to bring those who may not recall, those watching us for the first time, we did receive a very thoughtful letter from the Social Equity Caucus, asking how going forward we can think about and work to ensure that the State Board of Education is representative of all Vermonters, sort of the Vermont today and the Vermont of the future and make us the State where a wide range of people want to live, work and make their livelihood. So with that, Senator Rom, have you had an opportunity to look at the language? I have, I have. Terrific, terrific. And I'm sorry, I'm just looking here. I know Jeannie probably has it up. There it is, yep. Okay, Senator Rom, the floor is yours. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, for the record Senator Keisha Rom from Chittenden County. I'm grateful to be present with your committee, along with Mr. Lovett and Mr. Jepsen. It gives me the opportunity to say to both of them that this is certainly nothing personal. It's not in any way questioning your professional credentials or the perspectives you bring or even that you care about the young people of Vermont. But we wrote that letter out of a concern that overall the Board of Education is becoming increasingly less diverse of perspectives that are really necessary to advance the wellbeing of Vermont's learners. I wanna say, I recognize that the St. Johnsbury area of Bennington County, these are areas that have high poverty, high ratios of families who access free or reduced lunch. Those are also counties that already have representation on the Board of Education. And that comes at a time when certain large counties and communities have zero representation, but a large share of our state's learners and young people. So I wanted to start by saying that. We have a growing concern about the diversity of the Board of Education. And there's good reason for that. In case the committee hasn't heard this statistic before, High Coach, in case the committee hasn't heard this statistic before, when you look at the state's diversity in terms of racial breakdown, Vermont has a population of about 6% BIPOC folks. And that's 90% of the population growth in this state in the last decade has come for people of color. So when you break that down further, that's about 3% of people over the age of 65 are BIPOC, but 10% of our school kids. So the diversity of our school children overall is supersedes the overall BIPOC diversity of our state. So I just wanna say, as you think about populations that are in many ways left behind, that if they're not given the resources and fair treatment in schools, tend to bring down test scores and other quality indicators because they're not having their needs met. And that is a mark against our entire education system. Then we end up in a sort of spiral when it was highly preventable to make sure that you have diverse set of voices who can speak to the needs of a diverse group of learners and start to ensure that all students are getting what they need. So specific to the language as it, for those viewing who might not have seen the language, as I understand it, instead of just articulating that the state board of education needs to have geographic diversity, it speaks to geographic diversity, gender diversity, racial diversity and ethnic diversity. I think that's an incredible step in the right direction to really sending a message to the administration and the governor, whoever they may be, that this is a really critical step to making sure that our board of education is more reflective of all of those elements of diversity. I also, it wasn't something that came up in our letter, but gender diversity is really important too because a lot of our, 75% of our teachers are identifying as women. So we have a lot of women in our schools and yet not as many women on the board of education. So we were just looking at some trends where we saw some overrepresentation from people at independent schools as opposed to public schools. And less diversity of who's educating our kids, who's in our schools, et cetera. And that does not bode well for interim quality across the board at all of our learning institutions. You're on mute, Mr. Chair. Thank you, Senator. And so with that change and I don't know, certainly you have time, we're going to probably officially vote this, I would think early next week and send it back or send it to the house on one of their bills because we do believe this is a priority that should be addressed this year. Are you comfortable with the language change that we've made? I think there are too many laundry lists we could get into if we tried to articulate some, a lot of identity differences, but I actually think it captures the spirit of saying we need to be paying attention to demography, identity, lived experience perspective when we do this, which was already in the law. It said that you have to take into account geographic perspective and difference. And that was for a reason. There was in an intent there to say, you can't stack the board with a certain county or a certain perspective. And so this I think evolves that language to meet 21st century learning needs. I would also say to be fair, often we talk about racial and ethnic diversity as just benefiting those who are black or brown kids, those who identify as the learners who are sometimes underrepresented in who's making decisions. But we are in an increasingly global community where I was just talking to a young woman over lunch, helping her figure out which college she's gonna go to. And she wants diversity wherever she goes. She wants a global community. She wants a world-class education. And that means having a lens that is diverse that has an equity perspective because that's what is going to help you be successful in college and in the rest of the country. Thank you, Senator Rahm. Appreciate that. Any questions at this point for Senator Rahm before we turn to Representative Christie and then the Chair of the State Board, Mr. Carroll. Hey, Representative Christie, great to have you with us again and thank you for your time last week as we dove into this. Appreciate your leadership. And wondering if you might want to weigh in on the language that we are proposing as well. I think Senator Rahm did a very good job on explaining where we're at today. If we were to go into every facet of our statutes and you recall when we did the revision of Title 16 when you and I were both on house ed, that's a pretty intensive labor intensive operation. But I think that there are times in our history where we have an opportunity. I look at this as does the Senator as an opportunity to express our intentionality as a state that all of our kids matter. You would say, well, how could you be involved in education and not think that? Well, there are times that there is a separation and whether intentional or otherwise, it's there. So when we have the opportunity to clearly state what we feel as the elected leaders of the state of Vermont need to be reflected within our institutions, our fellow volunteers will understand. And I think that Senator Rahm, as I said before, did a very good job explaining the demographic and the statistical components of why. But from the other perspective, just the social perspective, thinking back to a statement of Dr. King where he refers to when we raise or one is affected, we are all intrinsically affected. So this good action will have incredible ramifications in a positive way for the state of Vermont. And I guess that's all I'd like to share. And I really appreciate the work of Senate Ed in moving this forward. Thank you, Representative Christie very much. And thank you again for raising the issue. Before we move on to Chair Carroll, any questions for Representative Christie? Mr. Carroll, good afternoon. Great to have you with us. And we appreciate you may get our Star Witness Award this year, depending on how the rest of the session goes. We contacted Mr. Carroll not too long ago and he was able to join us. But we really in all sincerity appreciate it and appreciate you weighing in on this language. You are the leader of the skateboard and we certainly want to have your support in eyes on this. So with that, please. And you are muted, Mr. Carroll. That's how my wife prefers me to be generally muted. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the board and Senator Rahm and coach, nice to see you again, sir. For the record, I'm John Carroll, Chair of the State Board. I did have to change some things around to join you and I'm really glad to have the opportunity to do so. Thank you. I love what I see here. I just think this is not an obvious improvement but it's a heck of an improvement. And I guess it is obvious, but if it's so obvious why didn't we do it before? In any case, I'm delighted to see this and I can't imagine that, well, I can't imagine that anybody on the board would feel otherwise. So of course, the work of this is the governor's responsibility. We're not a self-selecting group. We always wait in great, a little bit like the night before Christmas, kind of who's the governor going to give us this time? And so, and it's always a surprise and we're always happy with it. I guess I would just have to say that diversity is something that I've come to learn to value and I'm using diversity in the broadest possible sense, economic diversity, gender, racial, and international. And where I learned the value of diversity actually was in my service in the Senate, which of course was so long ago that most of you were in high school when I was there. But what I learned from six years there was that we were better when we were together and that it was the incarnation of synergy. Synergy means that the sum is greater than the total or the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And that I used to be astonished in meetings of committees when somebody very different than I would just say something that was so insightful and would cause us all to sit up and say, oh, I never thought of that. And we were better for it and our work was better for it. So I came to have this love affair with diversity of all sorts. So this is all part of that. I just would add some, I hope clarification about the makeup of the board. In 2002, 2020 last year, the governor made I think four appointments. One student, two new members replacing people who had termed out and another member replacing somebody who had left before their term was done. And of the four appointees, all four were women. So the notion that the board is balanced toward men is not factually accurate of the present makeup of the, as you know, there are 11 members of the board, one of whom is ex officio, that is to say the secretary of education. That person isn't a sort of class unto her or himself. The remaining 10 are citizens, ordinary people, some with education backgrounds and some not. And of the 10 of us now, six are women and four are men. So there seems to be some misunderstanding about the gender makeup of the board and those are the simple facts of the matter. As to the somehow there's this talk about an affiliation with private schools, I'm not sure, or independent schools, I'm not sure just what that means. I do know that one recently appointed member has a background in education in independent schools and another board member who's been on for a couple of years was formerly a member of the board of directors of an independent school. That's two out of the 10 that have some connection to independent school. I'm not aware of any other connections and you certainly wouldn't be able to ascertain it from listening to us talk. So I guess in some I would say that one of the virtues of the board is its diversity. And I think this amendment to existing statute will memorialize that and help to remind governors when they make appointments that this is something that they need to be attending to. The board is not and never has been an assemblage of special interests or stakeholders. There have been times to change the board that way. In fact, I think Senator Campion, you'll remember when you were in the house in 2012 and the passage of Act 98, there was a proposal to make the board consist of a representative of the teachers union and a representative of the school boards association instead of a cluster of stakeholders. And that was by the legislature rejected as an approach. The board is a pretty mixed bag of people. Some people who actually have had involvement in schools sometimes as classroom teachers and otherwise as administrators or leaders. And but for people like me other than serving on my local school boards and going to school and having had wonderful teachers, that's all I know about education. So I think that diversity actually is rich in just the same way you are in the same way that the general assembly is made up of an marvelous amalgam of vermonters from all walks and all backgrounds, all intellectual disciplines. And the result is the synergy that comes from diversity. That's all I have to say. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I think we have some agreement around language and I'm looking to the committee to see if committee members have any final questions on this topic at this point or comments. So not seeing any, please, Senator Hooker. Thank you, Senator Campion. And thank you, Mr. Carroll. I have a question for you regarding the previous appointments, the floor appointments. Do you recall what the makeup of the board was then before the four women were appointed? Let's see, I'm just trying to remember who replaced whom. I think it was, there was, ah, yeah, there was one student member who was a male, a young man who was replaced by one of our present student members. Who, by the way, and I'm a little unsure about this because I haven't had a chance to chat with her, but I think she would identify as Hispanic, by the way, for what it's worth. And then the other members to your question, Senator Hooker, a woman replaced a man, I remember. And I think that it, I think it took the balance from being about equal between male and female to being slightly advantaged for females. Slightly, but I wasn't, you notice I wasn't counting. And secondly, is there, is this a strict appointment? I wondered if there was an application, if people requested to be on the board or is this just a strict appointment from the governor? Oh, well, it's certainly that. I mean, it's based upon the governor's judgment. I think that there is some mechanism on the website for people to indicate their interest. And as I understand it, this year, the governor's office did put out a press release or something notifying folks of these vacancies. In fact, I got calls from maybe a half dozen folks who'd heard those public service announcements and called me to say, what's it take? What's it like? And so on and so forth. And in every case, I just tried to be helpful. So I think it's a mixed bag of the governor may know somebody that he has in mind for this or they get brought to the governor's office attention or they may, you can ask these two coming up how that works. It's a mixed bag. Okay. Thank you. And maybe our new members can test to that. Thanks. And Senator Hooker, Genie I think has sent around an email response from the governor's office also giving additional information on the process and the application and that information. So that hopefully will be helpful as well. Thank you. Okay. Any other questions or comments? Thank you, Representative Christie. Thank you, Mr. Carroll. And I know Senator Rom needed to return to committee but I'd like to thank her as well. The committee will add this as I mentioned to some of our other work and send it to the house sometime next week. And I will look to all of you if you have additional questions or edits before we get to that stage. Otherwise I think we're in good shape. So thank you. And Mr. Demeray, thank you as well for providing us with that draft. Switching just slightly but staying on the same topic of our State Board of Education. Welcome again gentlemen. Mr. Lovett and Mr. Jepsen. Great to have both of you with us. We have decided as a committee that we don't know if historically State Board members have come to committees. I think it might be a nothing really established where it's become a tradition but we thought we would try to either start that tradition or return to it given that your positions really do warrant some time and some discussion. So thanks for being with us. We really very much appreciate it. What we thought we'd do is start with Mr. Lovett. Good to see you, Tom. Good to see you, Senator. And what we'd like to know really is if you would be so kind to just tell us a little bit about yourself, how you got to this position now wanting to be on the State Board and a little bit about some of your goals for the Board and for yourself in that I'm sure will stimulate some conversation amongst us. So thank you. Great. So first I wanna thank the committee for a chance to introduce myself. I know some of you from my days at Headmaster and I've been in touch with some of you in this past year through my work at the Northeast Kingdom Collaborative but there are some of you that I haven't met. And I also wanna thank Governor Scott for appointing me to the State Board of Education. And my hope today is that I will tell you a little bit about my background and experience, my reasons for wanting to be on the board and my hope for my time on the board. Indulging with just a little bit of personal history. I'm the oldest of two public school teachers. My mom started as a fifth grade teacher in Shelburne and ended as a preschool teacher after raising six children. My dad started as a high school teacher and coach in Pittsburgh, taught and coached in Shelburne in Bellows Falls. And then after being an assistant principal and athletic director in New Hampshire returned to Vermont as athletic director and coach at Springfield. And I mentioned their lifelong vocation as teachers because it inspired me to follow in their footsteps. I first was an engineering major but decided after reflecting on their experience and what I saw through their teacher friends that I would enter education. I gained through them important role models growing up. And these teachers inspired me to strive to make a difference in the lives of young people and see education as more than academics, educating the whole person to be a constructive citizen and a person of good character. They also taught me to care about those who struggle, to love those the most who need it the most. And that has been a motto at the core of my career for 40 years. Well, at first I thought I wanted to teach at the university level, this drive to serve the people most in the drew me to high school teaching. I've chosen to work at schools that though independent have a public mission. Most of my career has been at St. John'sbury Academy which serves about 40 to 50 communities in Vermont and Northern New Hampshire, as well as students from 20 to 30 different countries. The Academy offers a comprehensive curriculum, not only the arts and in academics but also special education at all levels and career and technical education. It serves all kinds of learners at all levels of learning. It also serves a diverse student body in terms of nationality and race, religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and educational backgrounds. When I was headed, it led efforts to serve refugee families and help students struggling with cognitive, physical, emotional and mental health challenges. It has an endowed fund to provide resources for students living in poverty, a fund which I took particular care to grow and which has been invaluable during this pandemic. Situated in one of the most economically disadvantaged and rural parts of the state, the Academy offers anti-poverty and leadership development programs like it's summer youth core, which I specifically designed to help break the cycle of poverty as a regional technical center, it offers also workforce development and adult education. And before I left his head, I helped secure a space for an adult education workforce development center in the new Depot Square building in downtown St. John'sbury. Plus recognizing that only through collective action and cross sector collaboration, can we transform systems. It is sponsored community outreach programs like the community of concern that I started in my first year's head and community arts programs to foster community vitality and healthy connections for young people and their families. Now, I humbly recognize that the success of the Academy in doing all that it does so well is a result of collaboration and teamwork. It's not the headmaster's work. I only mentioned the success as part of my background so you can start to see where my values lie in the range of my experiences over the past 36 years. As retiring last June, I was fortunate to be asked to fill an interim role as director of the Northeast Kingdom Collaborative. I've mentioned this experience because through what I learned, the power of collective action and the knowledge one can gain by gathering stakeholders and listening to the wisdom in the room. I also learned to appreciate both the uniqueness and the challenges of our rural communities and their schools. So this is a summary of what I hope to bring to the State Board of Education, the knowledge, experience, skills and values. I hope to make a positive difference in the lives of young people, their families and their communities. I hope to be a good listener, identifying gaps in our systems and helping to bridge them. I especially hope to find ways to improve our systems to best serve those most in need. I decided to apply to be on the Board because I see we're at an important and new moment in Vermont education. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed disparities and problems. It has shown the importance of mental health and school culture. It has highlighted the power of new technologies and opened up new possibilities for personalizing instruction. Also, the new societal consciousness of the critical need for diversity, equity and inclusion also has exposed disparities and problems. It has brought us to consider questions of justice and access, recommitting ourselves to seeing the world through the lens of equity and inclusion. And it has highlighted the need to build healthy school communities within healthy larger communities. And finally, I decided to apply to be on the Board because in response to the effects of the pandemic, I saw that abundant resources were coming to our state and communities giving us a once in a lifetime or once in a generation opportunity for transformational change. So during my time on the Board, I hope to do all I can to ensure high quality, personally relevant educational experience to all students. For me, that means academics and culture and climate, curricular and extracurricular offerings and opportunities that are personalized and community-based. I'd like to see Vermont's diverse educational landscape be a world-class model and I believe that's possible. My drive to help accomplish it is somewhat personal. Two of our five children are teachers, one in early education and one in secondary education. So I wanna help Vermont system support high quality education of body, mind and spirit at all levels. I also have three grandchildren in public elementary school in Vermont, one receiving special education services. So I wanna help Vermont system to allow each of them to thrive, find his or her passion and pursue it with the resources and support each one needs. And finally, I remain committed to helping Vermont's communities develop a shared vision of and shared responsibility for a system of education that's sustainable and aspirational, equitable and accessible and holistic and personalized for all. Again, I'm thankful for the opportunity to make this statement of introduction and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you, Mr. Levitt. If I may, I'm just going to kick it off. You've been in Vermont in education now for a long time and I know that St. John's Berry Academy, although sometimes thought of as an institution in some regards, similar to a Phillips Exeter or Andover, you are also a local public school. You are the local public school for St. John's Berry area. And so I think what I'm wondering is what, whether it comes from the state board or it comes from the agency or it comes from this committee, what sort of, what area would you really see us focusing on? I mean, we, as you may have heard, we're working hard on literacy. We've identified that as an issue in our pre-K through third graders and even going on. I think that's certainly something we're going to continue to look at next year as well. And I'm just, other things that you can think of that you would see as priorities that, and for me, oftentimes it's those, maybe small changes that can make a big difference if you will. So I'll start really close to home in that right now, I'm very concerned about the mental health of our young people. And at all levels, not just high school, but I see it in the elementary, middle schools as well. So that would start there. That would be an area of focus of how we could support them. It takes wraparound services we find in schools. And so many schools don't have the resources to provide wraparound services that will yield the mental health or the social-emotional health that our young people need. So that's one thing that I would mention. I also think that there's an opportunity for personalized or performance-based, outcome-based assessment of a student learning and to set high quality outcomes and to allow students to get there. That aspect of our educational system, the assessment piece, I think also would be an area that I would pay attention to. I think that it's hard in rural communities to get the kind of internship experience of the workplace-based learning that you can get in more populous areas. But I do think it's still possible to have a personalized and performance-based educational system. And then there's just the equity issue. I think coming from the Northeast Kingdom, I see families who struggle and to getting broadband up here will be awesome. It will be, that will be an important issue, but there's also issues around housing and early childhood programs and access to those things and transportation. And so I just think the more that we can level the playing field, that we can help students who live in poverty, that would be another part that I would focus on. Thank you very much. And I appreciate, as you know, we have the Chair of Health and Welfare on here, Senator Lyons, who works hard on the mental health piece. And so it's great that for you to share that. And I think we all recognize that as an issue as well. Other questions, Senator Persley? Yeah, thank you, Chair. And thank you for being willing to serve on the board. And I really enjoyed our visit that we made up to St. Johnbury Academy last year, it's a very impressive institution. And I think anybody would be excited to have their child attend there. So the question is, because it's kind of different, how do you kind of see yourself taking that role from the headmaster of the Academy to being on the board, kind of supporting all students throughout the state? And it's specifically kind of what do you think you, as having that role at the Academy, or just these independent schools in general can provide to the whole state? Because to be direct, there's people out there in the field that some of these independent schools are draining the public schools. And that are like stealing the kids or something like that. So I wondered if you could just speak to that issue. I'll speak to the second part of what independent schools can provide. And then I'll mention my own personal role. So I think independent schools are mission-based and they're as close to a charter school as Vermont has as a place to experiment with some things that might be good for the whole. And I think that there are things that happen in independent schools that can benefit all educators. Well, I don't know enough to speak to the enrollment issue that you mentioned. I know that in St. John'sbury anyways, that's not really the case where we are the school for surrounding 12 communities. So I don't know by from experience that I will say that my experience with the Northeast Kingdom Collaborative humbled me and I think changed me in ways that I didn't expect. And I'm faster than I thought. Having been somebody who was in charge of an organization and making decisions in a kind of CEO role and then moving to a Northeast Kingdom Collaborative as an interim director. And the Collaborative is a convener. It doesn't do the projects. It brings people together and we listened to the wisdom in the room from the experts and the people who do know the stakeholders, try to help them come to some kind of consensus and understanding and then go try to make those actionable by bringing resources to bear on those strategies and priorities. I see that work very similar to the work of the state board, gathering stakeholders, getting input from stakeholders, listening to the wisdom in the room and then as a group coming together for a direction. Thank you. It is interesting and there must be ways for, you know, the general publics to learn from the independence and the independence to learn from the publics. And that is something I've always been interested in pulling apart. So I welcome any conversation you might start at the state board around that, particularly around, we want, and I believe I'm speaking for the committee, we would love to see Vermont become the place for teachers to teach really. I mean, really the state that when you talk about the United States, people want to teach in Vermont. And it's something I know I'm interested in having summer conversations about and certainly welcome those voices around how to get us there. And it's a complex question. But, you know, it does have the reality of it. It has something to do with money. It has to do with benefits. It has to do with a lot of things. But in general, those who are putting their names forward to be in the classroom, I do believe for the very most part, like physicians, there's a calling. There's something there that they really want to do that work. And I would love for us to get to the point where we compete for those best teachers, continue to compete for those best teachers. We have a lot of great teachers in this state. And I want us to really build on that. I think that one thing I'll offer in that regard is my work on the Act 173 Census-Based Funding Advisory Group has been very collaborative and from people both from the independent and public school communities. And there's been shared learning there as we share perspectives around how to serve the students who do need special services and who do need special education. So that group has done it. I know it's possible that there can be shared learning and conversations between both the independent school and the public school world. Thank you for that. Other questions, comments? Senator Lyons, please. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lovett, for being here. Your very thoughtful answers are extremely helpful. I do have a question about a couple of things. One, you mentioned wraparound services and the need for that within our schools. And but that also then brings up the distinction between social services and education. And so do you have any thoughts about how to meld the what we're seeing for needs between so picking mental health could be other areas of counseling or services. How do you see solving the problem between the need for teaching and the need for counseling? Thank you for that question because it's something that I don't think it was Senate education, might have been house education that I addressed this earlier in my career. We're fortunate at St. Johnsbury that we have people, like I mentioned, who would donate private monies to a fund that will help students in need. And part of that money helps to pay for on-site counselors for students who have social emotional needs. And those counselors also, we also have a network of care outside of the school that they have access to some partners in social work and social services and human services and youth services. And so when a student is in trouble and I could tell stories from today, from my class today, when a student is in trouble, it's all hands on deck. And everybody has a stake in that student's wellbeing. And so it's not siloed, it can't be siloed. And everybody's doing their part. And sometimes one person has to take a lead, one organization or institution has to take a lead. But it's everybody's involved in helping that student. I think that the whole educational support team that's in Act 173 and the multi-tier system of support gets to this kind of issue. That there's a team discussing students who are falling through the cracks or who are in crisis and deciding who takes the lead on them. And I'll just say one more thing. The community concern that I started in my first year's head is based on something that happened in the Washington DC area. And it fell apart in short because there was that kind of siloed approach to services. And that happens when money, when it was an atmosphere of our environment of scarcity, that's what happens. People wanna get what they get. If you can somehow get the funding, then the wraparound services can happen. Thank you. Can I ask one more question, Mr. Chair? So thank you for that. I think the comment about scarcity is very much on target. You also talked about the fact that you're a convener and you're like to listen to input and... But on the board, you're gonna be called to make decisions on a regular basis. Can you talk a little bit about the decision-making that you'll have to make as a board member? Yeah, which is why I wanted to mention my values. So you knew where I was coming from what base, from which I would make my decisions. I was headmaster of one of the largest schools, maybe the most diverse schools in the state, which included a campus in Korea and some economic development work in the region. It was a big job. So I didn't have any problem making decisions, but making a... I always wanted to hear from the people who would know better than I about the specifics of the issue, but then using as much wisdom and discernment based on my values, I'm used to making decisions. Thank you. Any other questions or comments for Mr. Lever? If I could just answer Senator Hooker's questions about process. Yes, please. So there was an application that I filled out, I had a bio and sent in my CV. I had talked with the governor and the governor's office over the years about education, was not called in for a specific interview this time, but did put in an application to not only voice my interest, but also give some kind of biography and credentials. And if I may, Senator Campion, and was that based on something that you saw, the opening was available? Was it, or had you been? So as a member of the Act 173 funding committee, I've been aware of the board and actually I've been aware of the board and watching it since I was headmaster was part of my job. So I knew that there were openings coming up, but to be honest, I didn't know about the exact timing until Representative Scott Beck asked me if I was gonna put my name in. Okay, thank you. So Beck is behind this, eh? Yes. I went in to buy a book and ended up applying to be on the board. Thank you. Be careful in those bookstores. Thank you. Any other final questions for Mr. Levitt? Mr. Levitt, thanks very much for being with us. We really very much appreciate it. Really appreciate your dedication to education as well as public service and look forward to continuing the conversation and very much looking forward to working with you in the years to come. It's my pleasure. Thank you for this opportunity and thank you for the service you give to the state of Vermont and all of our students. Thank you. Mr. Jepsen, welcome. Thank you very much. And, boy, Tom, you're a tough act to follow. I was just gonna say it might be tough, but we have the utmost confidence. We've heard great things. I know you have two senators on this committee, Senator Hooker and Senator Tarnzini who regrets not being able to be here. You may have heard that he had oral surgery and otherwise would be here and has been a great member of this committee. So I wanted to pass that along to you. So the floor is yours. Well, thank you very much. And it's great to see our Rutland delegation here with Cheryl leading that way. And I am glad that Tom took the tough question. So thank you for throwing me the softballs later on. If you looked at my resume that I did forward, you're gonna find that it's, you might say, well, Lyle, could you hold a job? And so I've gone from being a teacher at North Country Union High School to being a principal at Fairhaven, to being a principal in an elementary school, but finally found my way. And I think Kevin probably told you the other day found my way when he helped me get into technical education at Stafford Technical Center where I was a director for 16 years. And so I'm coming to you with a clear bias and that bias is around CTE and making sure that we have clear pathways from high school to tech centers, to higher education. And so my background, I think, prepared me for that, specifically being a high school principal and seeing how things operated there and then going to a tech center and seeing that there was a clear disconnect. And so my goal over the years was to try to eliminate some of the stereotypes that were associated with technical centers. And I didn't realize when I got that job that about 85% of my job was marketing and marketing to schools and students and to the public. So I spent about 29 years in public education ending at Stafford Technical Center where I then went and became the Dean of Entrepreneurial Programs at Castleton University. We opened a downtown office here in Rutland with the goal of better connecting with the community that morphed into working in economic development. Castleton took on a contract with Rutland Economic Development Corporation and I guess you could say merged the two organizations. As things change, as they always do, financial considerations brought that merger to a close. And I spent a couple of years at Vermont Tech working as the Director of the Career and Technical Teacher Education Program. When a position came open to merge the Chamber and Economic Development, the Chamber of Commerce in Rutland and Rutland Economic Development Corporation, I was asked to come back and work on that merger, not realizing that I would be sitting in this swivel chair that I'm sitting in right now as the Executive Director. I just thought I was helping them put that together. So I've kind of quite frankly been in education my entire life because what I'm finding right now in economic development, it's about education and it's about looking into the future. And if you were to ask the question that you asked Tom a little while ago, well, what is it that I see my role being and what do I wanna do on the State Board? I want us to look at what five and 10 years down the road looks like because COVID has taught us some things and it's taught us that we don't need to look like what we looked like before. And maybe hybrid education or remote education doesn't need to go away in many situations. And so we need to look carefully at what education will look like five years from now, 10 years from now. And I was hoping that Kevin would actually be here because I wanted to talk about the equity piece. And when I'm in my current job right now, we're laser focused on trying to attract new people to Vermont, specifically to Rutland, but if not Rutland then Vermont. And as we're doing that, we get questions from people. And we have a concierge service of 25 people of all different backgrounds. And the concierge people grab people that come in who are interested in learning more about Rutland County. The questions we get, as you might imagine, are about jobs, they're about housing, but they're also about education. They're not going to come to Vermont if education isn't quality. And the people that we're trying to attract are young people. They're the 25 to 35 year olds and we're spending a lot of money doing that right now. But there's also another question that I get. And I had a phone call from a gentleman in Chicago the other day. And I knew where he was going when he said, Lyle, when you walk out your office door, am I going to be the only person of color walking down Merchant's Row? And so we had to have the conversation about what Vermont looks like. And so from that conversation, we're now starting at the Chamber in Economic Development, what I'm calling our essential journey. We have hired a consultant to do not just DEI training for our entire board, but we're also going to create a strategy. And that strategy is to make Rutland and Rutland County look like what we'd like it to look like in the future. And that's about being a welcoming place. And that's what our schools need to be. And I'm not sure they've always been as welcoming as we had hoped. And that's what I think we've heard the other Senator who was here earlier, Keshav Ram talking about. It's about feeling comfortable wherever you are. And right now there are people that do not feel comfortable being in public school or being in private school or wherever they are. So I want future students walking through the doors feeling comfortable and safe and learning in a quality way. And it's happening all over Vermont, but I think that we're hearing that it might not be equal everywhere. So we need to work on that. But when you look at me, I'm the age I am, the color I am, the experience I've had, I don't know what I don't know. And so that's why I'm gonna bring my board through training because I need to learn and we need to create what we want things to look like. So with that, what are my priorities? Equity, excellence and affordability. And I come from a background where my father was a banker and we knew where every penny was. And we need to know where every penny is now. We're spending a lot of money for every student that we're educating. Is it sustainable? I'm not sure. So we need to look into that into the future and how we're going to be sustained what we want things to look like. I have a daughter who's a teacher. I have Tom was talking about his background and what encourages him. Well, my daughter encourages me because she works in a special needs school. And she tells me about the backgrounds and the things going on with her students. And I love her for it. Sometimes I don't know how she does it every day. But she smiles every day because she knows she's making a difference. And that's what we all wanna do. So if I can make a difference, I'd love to do that. But I have to warn people, I come with a bias and it's about career and technical education. And it's about helping our employers find highly skilled people who can move our economy forward. And it's about how do we have that transition from elementary school to high school to tech centers to further education whether that's college or not. How do we make that a clear pathway that's easy to access, that's affordable so that we can just keep things moving in a positive way? So clearly not as articulate as Tom. Oh, I thought that was great. Really great. Open to the easy questions now, thank you. Senator Chittenden. So thank you very much, Lyle, for applying and for being willing to serve. My question has to do with the first thing I heard you say is your priority. And I don't know how much this intersects with the Board of Education, but in my role in my three months here, I'd love for you to give me your thoughts on how do we achieve equity, which was your first priority, in a state that loves local and cherishes and very much protects local control. How do we ensure that for all these school districts that want to have a lot of say over how they're prioritizing their budgets, where they commit their resources, how do we as a state strive for equitable access to educational opportunities while still distributing so much decision-making to our local communities? Do you have any thoughts to expound upon how we achieve equity while still honoring the local control attributes that are fiercely independent Vermont communities? Chair, so much. And as a lifelong Vermonter, I share that fierceness. But I will say that children can't pick where they live and they can't pick where they're born. And so we need to help with the education part of that. And people may not like the answer that I give to this question, but we may, we either need to pay a whole lot of money so that we can have local control or we need to give up some of that local control so that we can have some, maybe a little more equity. There is a common, a middle ground there. And we can't continue going with complete local control into the future if we expect it to be sustainable into the future. So that's my short answer. Great answer, thank you. And I think that the combinations that have been happening of school districts, the reduction in the duplication of effort has got to continue. Look at Hawaii. Hawaii has one school district. Right, right. Manhattan has one school district, yeah. Islands. I really welcome and I'm excited by your background in career and technical education. I believe my colleagues are as well. And you mentioned early on that there's still, we have to break something down there. There's still this, that's for some people, it's not for others. Honestly, I wish I think I really could have benefited immensely from taking a couple of classes at our career and technical center in high school or a few class. And I think there are probably a lot of young people out there right now that either, are also maybe in the same boat. So could you say a little bit more about breaking that down and how we can let everybody know that this is for everybody and this is a huge asset that we have in our state. Yeah, and I don't want to sound like I'm repeating myself but when I was a tech center director, 85% of my job was relationship building and it was telling people what we were actually doing, not what they thought we were doing and working with employers. And when I wanted to put together a new program at Stafford Tech, I knew if I got my employers together that there was no stopping us because they needed the employees and they were gonna pay them well and they would help us market the process and what the program had to offer. It takes people working together. Tom said it a little while ago, it's pulling people together so that they know what the facts are and not what they thought the facts were. And it takes a long time to do that. And so I think- I'm sorry to interrupt. Does that also mean the students? In other words, what gets or maybe this is, maybe I misinterpreted or misunderstood the concern. You feel like there might be a student in Rutland High School that is really knows that not only is the English class and the German class for him or her, but also a class at the technical, at the tech center also could be a spot for him or her. There are stumbling blocks that prevent students from accessing technical education. And that goes all the way from teacher contracts and when people get to work, how the buses run, when the bells ring. At my tech center long ago at Stafford Tech we had seven different sending schools with seven different schedules, seven different arrival times. There's no, quite frankly, there's no reason for that. I understand the reason, but I think we can resolve those. I know that because the elementary school bus runs at a certain time, you can't get the high school kids to the tech center until a certain time, but it seems like we should be able to resolve those issues. Even having a common calendar with common times where teachers are doing common professional development would be exciting. Thank you, Senator Hooker, please. Thank you, and thanks, Lyle, for stepping up to serve on the board and for all the work that you've done, certainly at the technical center here. I really appreciate Stafford and I appreciate your wanting to kind of break down the stereotype of the technical center. On the other hand, there's a lot of emphasis now on STEM and tech and workforce development, which I certainly appreciate, but how do we continue to keep what's necessary of literacy and the arts and all of those things and meld them breaking down the silos? So as Senator Campion said, every student realizes that everything is there for all of them. So, and I know that that is impossible because I led three lives type thing would be good here, but I don't know that that's possible either. Well, you're referencing a personal learning plan and I'm not sure why a student can't do art in his welding lab. I saw some of the most beautiful work coming out of the welding lab, again, at Stafford Technical Center, sorry. I don't know why that student couldn't get our credit for that, but there are certain stumbling blocks that keep students from doing that. And literacy quite frankly should be taught within whatever project is going on and it does not need to be a separate standalone course. Easier said than done, but I think there are ways to keep the literacy, the math and all going, which is what is essential because quite frankly, when a student comes out of a tech center, people would say, well, why don't you teach them at the tech center? And that, well, I didn't necessarily teach them to be a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter, but I taught them to be confident and I taught them that they have transferable skills and we taught them that literature, reading and writing and math are essential. I don't know if I answered your question or just talked around it, Cheryl. No, you do, I think. And it's learning across the curriculum and having math and art and literature and auto mechanics in everything that we do. Thanks. And I didn't answer your initial question about how I was asked to be involved in this and I think how it evolved was one of my former students who now works at the department of labor asked the agency of commerce and community development, Joan Goldstein to call me one weekend and say, would you ask him to do this? And so she did and but she said, you have until Monday to decide. So it didn't take me long. All right, thanks a lot. Any other questions or comments for Mr. Jepsen at this point? Okay, Mr. Jepsen, thanks so much for joining us. Very much appreciate all that you've already done for Vermonters through your work in our schools and now your work with the chamber and look forward to working with you going forward to advance education in our great state. So thank you very, very much. Thank you for the time. Committee. Mr. Demeray, see that you're with us. There you are, thanks. I am. Jim, would it work for you if we were to take a 10 minute break and then have a walk through on S114? Oh, it'd be great. Great, thanks. All right, then we'll come back.