 Good afternoon. It's February 19th. It's 1 p.m. in the afternoon and this is your most education committee and we are going to be discussing this afternoon an act relating to equitable access to high quality education through community schools. And we have a guest, Andrew Labarge. Welcome. And you can start anytime. Good afternoon and thank you for letting me speak as a witness to House Bill H106. I'm going to say that. My name is Andrew Labarge and I've been teaching third grade at Molly Stark Elementary in Bennington since 2014. I'm actually a lifelong resident of New York but I've roots in Arlington. My work in my school doesn't end at the end of the school day. I'm a building leader. I'm the treasurer of my local association and I was the summer school coordinator at Molly Stark before the COVID epidemic struck. I've also been on the negotiations team for my local for the last three years and enough about me because the reason we're speaking today is in support of community schools in Vermont. I'd like to talk about how Molly Stark has been a model of how we can create a community school. Molly Stark has been the center of our community for a very long time. The name actually comes from our famous Patriot and wife of General John Stark, Molly Stark. She was a great caregiver to the colonists as they fought the British in the Revolutionary War. Molly was known for feeding and caring for so many people that her name became a synonymous with community service. So the Molly Stark Elementary School has evolved somewhat from its early model as community school but many of the services that are still available to students and families in the community. So for many years we had an outreach, a family at Molly Stark Outreach was headed up by our assistant principal and there was never a day that you would get to school before her or leave after her and the time that she spent coordinating everything that families needed was just amazing. She knew everything about every family that came to our school for a while with her leadership. We were really truly a community school. Today Molly Stark Elementary is part of a large school district that has six elementary schools, middle school, high school and in our newly named tech center. Molly Stark is located in Uptown, Bennington. It's surrounded by multiple community housing developments that provide low income housing for many Benningtonians. Many residents of the nearby community have limited resources in transportation so the location of the school has been an important part of its role as community school. Molly Stark provides a free breakfast and lunch for all learners and another service that we had for the low community before COVID was we would open the parking lot up to the local food pantry truck Veggie Van Gogh and on the first and third Wednesdays every month. Now Molly Stark provides education for learners in kindergarten through fifth grade and on site there's also a pre-K program for three and four year olds in the early childhood education program. This program provides a head start for many learners even though it's only a few hours a day it gives children the opportunity to interact with other children and social and emotional relationships. This program also helps trained educators identify early learning problems and provides a head start in identifying special ed needs. So the early childhood education group also provides an opportunity for the school-aged children to attend before and after school care. Early at 7 a.m. they can come in and after school they can stay until 5 30. In addition to these early learning programs Molly Stark had always provided after school for years for all learners. After school runs three to four thirty four days a week and the programs usually run like six week sessions with three sessions a year. So of course with the COVID-19 pandemic many of these services have been suspended. In addition to the after school program the district maintains a minimal $20,000 budget to administer a summer school program for all learners. As I said I was heading that up in 2019 we had about 80 of our 380 learners attend the four-week summer learning program. Program ran four days a week four hours a day and breakfast and lunch are provided. So some other community engagement activities that Molly Stark and some of the other schools in the district include math nights and literacy nights open house and more and these programs facilitate family learning activities. Many of the families attend and from my experiences when you provide the food the attendance seems to increase as well. So the New England Center for Children we call it NEC it's N-E-C-C in the acronym. It's housed in inside of the Molly Stark building and it provides educational emotional physical support for the children in the autism spectrum. This program integrates learners into our regular ed classrooms wherever possible and it provides individual education plans for each learner. The program has been great success in the community and it really provides families with the tools that they need to help the children right in their community in their school. Molly Stark holds attendance challenges and provides awards for families that to get their kids you know to school every day. We provide tutoring programs throughout the school year and some programs can now be continued over the summer months to ensure some reading writing and math skill practice. Molly Stark has created and continues to provide the Molly Stark scholarship fund which is awarded to Molly Stark graduates when they go on to attend college. Now another really important part of the community model is the health services and providing these services in the school building instead of in a healthcare setting is beneficial for families in a lot of ways and Molly Stark we had we've had for a long time an audiologist in the building onsite with one of the most advanced hearing centers in the region. Not only is the hearing center available for our learning community but it's also available for the public by appointment for elder for the elderly. The health office at Molly Stark has two full-time nurses on staff and they can assess learners vision and general health. They also provide medical services like medication delivery, glucose monitoring, insulin injections for the kids in elementary. Molly Stark is one of the few places that actually provided dental care within our school building. Dr. Brady was our provider he retired a few years ago but he held some of his dental practice at the school in Molly Stark. He would deliver the dental services to children from families that needed dental care but were unable to provide for their children. So part-time hygienists still works with many of the learners but since Dr. Brady's retirement the services inside the building have kind of been interrupted. Mental health is also a really necessary service that must be available to students and families in the community especially in this COVID world mental health needs just must be addressed. So Molly Stark employs two full-time counselors and we use area mental health staff as well from the DCF to provide counseling for learners of trauma and poverty. Molly Stark works in conjunction with the Sunrise Family Resource Center in town which provides counseling, parental support, home visits and much more. All of these components are crucial in creating community school that works to improve the health and the well-being of the people in the local community. Factors that are difficult are often too much for families and they are unable to provide the necessary care for their children. So having more schools in Vermont that use the community school model to improve the overall health and mental well-being of the community is important. I'm excited that this committee is considering H106 and I hope you will move forward this concept. I believe that the pilot model and vision could be very helpful to building existing and new supports for our students and communities. This pandemic has just exasperated these needs for schools to just create these partnerships with the community. So thanks and I'm happy to answer questions. I apologize for reading a script but I wanted to make sure I said enough to address this. So thanks. Thank you and Representative Cooley, I am back. Sorry Kate Webb here. I was fortunate enough to visit your school last year and it was really, really a wonderful experience. I'm going to open it up to questions. Representative Conlon? Thanks and I apologize. I arrived a few minutes late and you may have already gone over this but in the Southern Vermont Supervisory Union is Molly Stark your largest elementary school? Yeah. Yeah. Molly has, we average around three to four hundred kids around and then another one is around two hundred so we are substantially larger. And with that in mind, I guess first of all do families of the other schools in your Supervisory Union have access to these services and then my bigger question is more, how big a school is needed to be a good community school? Great question. I'm not sure if there's an answer for the size. It's more of the need in the community and the answer to the first question. I'm not really sure. Again, Molly was kind of a separate kind of unit for a while, kind of in its own and then the other schools are more downtown. Then some of the other elementary schools added to the district like Chasseries a little off the district panels a little south of there. A lot of the community needs in their own aspects. So it's certainly something that would work in any place that needs so implementing the dental plan into the school. It's really just a matter of getting a chair and getting a dentist to commit to that but time and effort to get people involved in that is the part. Today it's a little bit different. Again, the school district evolves quite a bit. We've re-consolidated into a new district as well. So it's just the idea that it can be done per school within districts as well. That's what I'm trying to get at. Thank you. That answers your question. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Representative Coopley. Thank you, Madam Chair. It seems that you offer Molly Stark offers a great amount of services to not only the students but the entire community. Do you do fundraising or have benefactors contributing to these programs? Yeah, and there was some questions I think that represented web that they answered a lot with early ed program. I think she was in some of it was grant money that provided a lot of this and the work was done through the early ed program to get that implemented. I'm trying to think of the first part of your question. Could you repeat that again? Sorry. My question basically goes around fundraising. Yeah, that's right. We do have a lot of fundraising. A lot of it's done through our PTG now. The PTG really works with our leadership team in Molly Stark. Obviously, everything's changed with COVID. We would do a number of fundraisers. That money would go into things for those family nights and things like that that gets funded through there. Again, that helps. The summer school funding was kind of budgeted for years and that's in addition to our special ed summer program because that's kind of a different entity. The summer programs for all learners and it's pretty neat, but COVID's kind of changed all that. Thank you very much. Thank you. You're welcome. Representative Brady. All right. Thank you, Representative Coopley. You sort of asked my question and trying to understand. I mean, it just sounds having not been able to visit yet. It sounds amazing and how you've been able to do that and the funding for so long. But I also wonder one of the things we're wrestling with in this bill is community schools that exist within the district and who sort of administers this and is it a school program or is it a district program? And so since you started at that school level, but now you're part of a bigger district, have there been any challenges or issues since you've become part of a district into keeping up your model? I think it's good for us to think about in terms of how we set this up. Yeah, excuse me. You know, I think it was, I wasn't around long enough to, again, there are some people that we can talk to about what it was like 25 years ago and is a real solid model of the community school. I think that there's lots of great things done within our district that promote the same kind of things within schools. It definitely has to do with how the administration in that school runs and how the community responds to what these schools are offering. So, you know, as you offer more things and you get more people involved, you can start that in another school. So within that, you know, I think that the other larger elementary school would certainly benefit from having those health services inside it as well. But I mentioned the audiologist, like a lot of times people will go over to Dartmouth and get referred to go to the audiologist here. So the services could be provided through our school as well in that same model in the sense that, you know, even though it's, but we'd have to make sure that those families could get the transportation and the children could be, you know, in the school itself. So if they're in another elementary school and part of their service is getting the hearing or the dental care, having them transported to the other school for that or something like that to tie those other schools together. And I'm really kind of talking without a lot of, I don't have all the answer. I'm just kind of really wanted to give a narrative today with what we, you know, have always kind of came up in research that, hey, we're a community school. I know I was at a conference in, I think it was Chicago, we were talking about building community schools and like, check, check, check, we have all those things. And so is me. Representative Brown. Oh, thank you. I was curious to know, so I think as we've heard a lot of folks from the field talk about learning re-engagement as we move through what's hopefully the end stages of COVID. What lessons around family engagement do you think that the community schools model can, can sort of give us to inform what those practices might look like going forward? Good question. Yeah, you know, that everything's changed. And, you know, we're, we, teachers, administrators, we're every day going, how are we going to get through to all of our families? You know, I, my class, I have a 16 learners average of, when we're remote, half of them, you know, attend during a day. And it's, it's, it's difficult. And it's really, there's a lot of reasons for that. It's not pointing fingers or blaming anyone. But so we were, we were talking about how do you, how do you get parents more involved? And we even thought about like having a virtual night for parents to learn how to navigate doing a Zoom meeting. You know, because the kids know, but the parents don't. Or in that case, you know, access to the, the internet's an issue in a lot of cases. But it's a lot of it is mostly just getting, getting the engagement commitment from the family. So that, that does come from, you know, the school making, really putting a value on that and saying, you know, we're part of your, you're part of us. How can we help you? What can we do to, to make it so it's easier for you to learn in this crazy world that we're in? Because, you know, parents just with all the, I'm fortunate, my mind are grown that when this happened and, you know, I can't imagine going through it today, but it is a really difficult thing to do. Now, you know, hopefully when we go back to normal, I do think we will someday that we can, you know, kind of go back to when we started this and, and, and, and Rep Web and, and James, when you guys came down, we weren't even thinking about the pandemic at the time, we were thinking about. So, so it's a different, a different monster altogether, but I don't know if I answered your question. No, that's helpful. Thank you. Okay. Representative Harrison. Thank you. I'm following up on Representative Copely's and Brady's question and this may not be in your wheelhouse. I'm just curious, a lot of the services that you offer probably shouldn't be figured into your prepuple costs. And I'm just kind of curious how you separate out those, those two expense columns. That's, that's definitely something I'm not good at. I couldn't be able to answer that with a, you know, honest answer. But I do know that, like, for example, in my classroom, there are certain children that are identified that get those services. So at the beginning of the year, they let me know it may be provided through the special ed, you know, probably, I think it's Medicaid mainly that decides where that comes from. But, you know, if that service was open to every, every learner, like not just specifically to the ones, I just can't, I just can imagine how much happier people would be about like going to their school. I love my school. I can, my kids go to the dentist and they have everything's there, you know? So that, that is a difficult, I don't know the funding issue and where it comes from today. Again, a lot of that before was, was through the family outreach group. And it was a really complex thing. And I think a lot of it was, like I said, this, this woman that was dedicated, she would, I don't know, you drive by on a weekend and her car was parked in the parking lot. So she put a lot of extra time into making all those things happen. So oh, my hand is off. No, we understand that you're a third grade teacher and you're not, not the master of the budgeting and expenses. So that is something we may be interested in, but we're probably, probably look more to your, your, the business manager. There's lots of people that can answer that question and, you know, the, how that works financially. Yeah. Thank you. Representative James. Andrew, thanks so much for coming. I, visiting Molly was such an amazing experience to see everything that you all are doing. So I just wanted to learn a little bit more about, and I guess just check my list. I was keeping a list. So I think I know you said you offer universal school meals. You said you provided free breakfast and lunch for all, all learners. And then could you tell me a little bit more about the, the expanded hours? I think you said that all learners can come as early as seven and stay till 430 through your sort of early morning drop off and after school. I, I'd love to hear a little bit more about that and about your summer program. And you, the summer program you said was open to all of your students as well, right? Yes. I'd love to hear a little bit more about how those programs work, you know, what you've offered during those times and how many students show up and how you think kids benefit. Cause I think one pillar of this bill is that expanded learning time concept. And it's one that's really interesting to me. Certainly will be opened up when we finally move into the census-based funding too. Yeah. I had the benefit of working a couple of years back. I actually started teaching in Molly Stark in 2004 through budget issues. I ended up losing my position and worked in New York where I live in a charter school for seven years in, we had an extended school day. And that was really beneficial for the community because most of the parents work two jobs to begin with. But, but that, that was for every, every kid. Now here, what we have is a little bit different. And I, and again, I know Dr. Abbott would be able to give us some more details of when you guys met with the program. But the, its program is certainly available, I think, but they can still apply for it. And then it's kind of down in the separate wing, but in the early ed. So parents can drop their learners off at seven in the morning. And then those kids will come to other classrooms when the school opens at eight o'clock on a normal school year, the way it used to be. And then after school at three o'clock, when they would get on the buses, if they were in that program, they would go down and go into the after school program. So I think they had maybe 20 kids in that program. And a lot of those were parents that were working, you know, full time. And I, there may have been costs that the parents partially funded, but having that available, you know, at the building is really beneficial. Rather than transporting them from, we have a daycare program nearby, and a lot of kids come from there on the bus. So they'll, you know, that's another way to provide it. But having that available to the parents, you know, a lot of us either have to drive a long way or start really early. So schools just don't fit into the schedule. So that helps a lot. The meals, we have the abbey group that is a separate entity than our district, but we hire them to feed. And I think those grants, when I was doing the summer program, it's through the federal federal fund food program. So we were somewhere's around 80, 70 to 80% free and reduced lunch to begin with. And so we were able to get funding to feed everyone. So there was no equity issue where some kids, you know, that free lunch and some didn't. And so was that that was a few years now. So we've always been able to provide, and it's all the schools in our district, can provide meals for both breakfast and lunch. With the pandemic, it's been a really difficult for them, but they've been able to do it and they'll package meals each morning. So when my kids come in, they have a bag of breakfast, and then lunches come in the afternoon, sealed, and you know, the kids have that. So they don't have to take the free lunch, but they have that opportunity to get that. In the summer program, I can give you a lot of, you know, I was actually the coordinator. And that was a great program because what it normally was at the end of school year, teachers would kind of feel out parents and kids and say, hey, you know, you could benefit from this program if you'd like to be part of it. And if the parents agreed, then we would put them on the list. Then I had to figure out how many teachers I needed based on the number of kids. And it usually came down to like a week before schools. But summer school started when I had finally rosters in place. So it was a little stressful, but it was really great. And so the kids would come in at 8 in the morning, eat breakfast, and then they're there until 12 o'clock. Parents picked them up. They just had lunch, and then they ate the rest of the day. It was just Monday through Thursday as well. But we had science and math integrated together in a class, and we had language arts and reading in history. So they were getting a little bit of everything. We even had a a gym teacher. So we could rotate and the kids had some activity as well. So it was really great. Really missed it last summer. I was just devastated when we couldn't do summer school. Sounds kind of crazy. You're like, but yeah, it's really big part of me. So hope that answers that question. Yeah, thank you. Okay. Thank you. And do we have time for me to ask one more quick question or do we need to move on? We've got about six minutes, I think. Yeah, great. Yeah, I did have just one more question since I didn't don't see any other hands up in the bill, which really is based on model legislation from the Learning Policy Institute. The work is done by a community schools coordinator. So there's a there's a funded position. And I wondered whether at Mali you have someone similar or whether that's you or whether over time all of these programs have just developed in an organic way. And so everybody's running, you know, their own program, but all moving toward the same goal. Yeah. I think I think this is something that is the biggest part of the piece like that that's in like I said, I went to the Chicago, we talked with some of the groups in New Jersey that had some really, really solid community schools. And it really was evolved around the leadership in that in that. And it was not necessarily always someone from the school, it was someone from the community as well, that that was able to tie all those services together and, you know, and be partners with the school. So obviously, this is in through the it has to be tied together with the bill I saw. This is really important part. So finding that right person is an issue too. Like, and, you know, I mentioned before that person was generally doing most of that work, not being paid to do that. So that does require a lot of extra work. And someone needs, you know, it has to be designated. Could it be an employee in the school? Absolutely. Could it be a local community member or a business leader, somebody that has a lot of connections to getting services and getting, you know, people together? Thank you. I see that that we we have Elizabeth Paris, who is the school nurse in Winooski here, along with Colin Robinson from the NEA. And I'd like to move on to that testimony. Andrew, you are more than welcome to stay with us if you need to go. I think I'll watch on YouTube and let everybody else take the floor. But thank you so much. I appreciate having me today. Thank you. Be safe, everybody. Thank you. So glad I was able to visit your school. Come again, please. We can do it on Zoom. Okay, Colin, Robinson, did you want to start or how would you like to do that? Hi, Madam Chair. I think it would be great for the committee to hear from Liz first. Okay. Thank you and welcome, Liz. I'm delighted to welcome you. I actually worked in the Winooski School District in the 90s. So remember it very fondly. Wonderful. Hello, everyone. I am Elizabeth Paris and I'm going to try to share my screen as I do have some slides that might help you when we talk about this. Let's see. Is it working? Not yet, but you are. You do have, there we go. Okay. All right. So now I'm going to get into my presentation. So my name is Elizabeth Paris and I am one of the school nurses in the Health Office Coordinator for the Winooski School District. And I am here today to share with you our successful creation and implementation of a school-based health center in Winooski. Some background, we are under one roof located here on one campus. The Winooski School District serves approximately 800 pre-K through 12th grade students. They speak about 18 different languages and 98% of them do qualify for free and reduced lunch. Most of our students do have a primary care home. However, families do face multiple barriers to accessing care. The idea of opening a part-time school-based health center was conceived to address these barriers and we modeled it after similar school-based health centers throughout the state. Some benefits of a school-based health center are to keep the students healthy and improve health outcomes, improve access to and utilization of needed services, promote health equity in a cost-effective way. A big one for me, increase the educational time and improvement of academic achievement, support our families, and collaborate with the medical homes. Our mission statement is to increase access to quality physical and mental health care services for Winooski students, reduce health care disparities, and keep our students safe, healthy, and well within their families and within our community. I'm going to share with you kind of a creation timeline so you can see exactly the work that we did to get our school-based health center up and running. In October of 2016, I presented the idea of creating a school-based health center in our district to our superintendent. I did receive immediate approval and the ability to move forward with the concept to see where we went. We quickly formed a multidisciplinary planning team. It consisted of members from our school. It consisted of members from some local health care organizations and some key community partners. We engaged multiple community stakeholders. We got buy-in from our local health care organizations. We applied for and did receive grant funding. And exactly 12 months later, we opened the door for the first time to the school-based health center. In our school-based health center, anyone can come and be seen as long as they have parental permission. However, parental presence is not required. We see acute visits, follow-up visits. We do different services that may be requested from the child's medical home. We can do point-of-care testing, rapid strep, urine analysis, urine culture, pregnancy tests. The doctors, they do order medications. They order labs and imaging just as if they were seeing the kid in their clinic. We do refer to specialty clinics as needed. And new this year, we did implement a flu vaccine clinic within the school-based health center. And we were able to vaccinate over 100 students. We do not offer well-child checks. We do believe it's important for the children and the families to keep connected to their primary medical home. And we do not manage chronic issues of patients such as type 1 or type 2 diabetes or medication management unless it is the actual patient of one of the two providers that's here or someone within their practice. We believe that communication, successful communication is one of the key components of keeping our school-based health center open. So at the end of every school-based health center visit, the medical provider does connect with the families, gives them an update, and advises them on next steps. I take care of faxing a visit note to the child's primary care office. And then we follow up afterwards as needed with a phone call to ensure that our kids are up to date on their health supervision. And we assist with scheduling well-child checks as needed. During the second year of our clinic, we had noticed 33 students were overdue for their well-child check. And we were able to help get 22 of them scheduled with their PCP office. Here's some measurable data that you may be interested in. I'm going to focus on the first and second year of the creation of the school-based health center due to the COVID pandemic last year and with the hybrid learning model and having to pivot into remote learning this year. The data is just not an accurate representation of what the clinic really does. So we'll just focus on years one and two. In the first year, we were open for 37 clinic days. And what that looks like is every Tuesday and Thursday morning, a provider would come and see the kids. The first year, we had 149 visits, 110 of which were unique. They saw between two and six students a day averaging about four, a school-based health center. Today, the following year, there were 56 clinic days, 348 visits. That's important to know as we move to the next slide. 225 students were unique and they averaged anywhere from two to 15 visits per day that they were open with an average of six kids. In the first year, 70% were scheduled. The rest were walk-ins. No one was turned away due to the lack of time. In 2018-19, 94% were scheduled. The rest were walk-ins. We did have to turn away 5% due to the lack of time. So we went back to the drawing board and collaborated with the medical homes. And each medical home agreed to allow their providers to have a full block in the morning, which meant an extra hour each day that they were here in order to be able to see all of the kids scheduled in any possible walk-ins. Last year, before we went remote and this year during our hybrid slash in-person model, no child has been turned away. So what happens at these visits? In year one, they prescribed 42% of the kids did receive some type of prescription, mainly in the form of an antibiotic. The second year, 29% received prescriptions. In both years, it was a total of 3% of the kids seen needed some type of imaging or x-rays. And the last one is laboratory testing. 8% needed additional point of care testing or blood work. And in 2018-19, 19% needed it. This is probably the slide that gets me the most excited, because this was my whole desire for creating the school-based health center here in Linuski. 89% of the kids that were seen in our school-based health center got to stay in school. That meant they didn't need to be early dismissed for a doctor's appointment. They were not tardy because of a doctor's appointment. They were not staying home for the day just because they had something that needed to be followed up eventually at the doctors. This was huge. This was my goal, and I'm very thankful it happened. 8%, unfortunately, did have to go home. And 1% did need to go on to the emergency room for follow-up care. But 89% got to stay in school. Of those 89%, that stayed in school, 75% required no follow-up. 15% did follow up with their primary care home. 9% had a follow-up in the school-based health center. And 1% needed a specialty follow-up. Just a note about our funding and how we were able to get our school-based health center off the ground. This space was donated by the Linuski School District. I'm sitting in one of the rooms now. And the provider time allotted by the University of Vermont Medical Center Primary Pediatrics and the Community Health Centers of Burlington. Providers would bill for their services. Routine supplies were provided by both Primary Peeds and Community Health Center. The startup cost, the nurse coordinator time, and the Community Advisory Council were funded by three separate grants. We applied for and did receive funding through the Children's Miracle Network, the UVMMC Community Health Investment Fund, and the Catch Grant. We are currently in our fourth year. We are now financially viable without the need for further grants. Our data continues to demonstrate an ongoing need for the school-based health center. Ongoing assessment of increasing our school-based health center days and hours is happening. We are expanding here in Linuski. We have a multi-million dollar construction project that is currently going. We hope to have the health office in our new home by May of 2022, at which point, one, if not both of the doctors are hoping to be able to spend a full day here once a week to provide services to the kids. I hope that this work inspires this committee, as you consider the H106 bill. Any questions? Thank you so much. I want to open it up to questions. So it just, I'll start with, so this is four years later, but it really took you about just a couple of years probably to really get up to speed, would you say, how long did it take you? Well, the desire to have a school-based health center was there for a few years. However, you do need a pediatric physician or a family medicine physician to co-lead. And at the time that we had considered this, there was no one available until 2016. A pediatric resident by the name of Dr. Anna Zuckerman through Primary Peeds took this on as her advocacy project, and we spent October of 2016 until October of 2017 forming our school-based health center and to what it is today. So your more urban location and access to the medical center certainly made this an awful lot easier, probably for you. Yes, we did have to, we made a point of connecting with all of the local pediatric and family medicine offices in Chittenden County and offering them buy-in to this program and the ability to come over here to clinics did accept our proposal and were willing to send stuff over. And that was Primary Peeds, which is through UVMMC and the community health centers of Burlington. It is important to note that probably 60 to 70 percent of our student population do attend Primary Peeds and probably 20 percent attend community health centers of Burlington. So by having those two large organizations be willing to come to the table and provide us with medical providers for two school-based health center days was so invaluable because it's just really a collaborative approach to taking these kids under their wings and making sure they have what they need. Thank you Representative James and then Brady. Thank you. That is so, that's so interesting to me. So I want to make sure I understand how it works and who's pitching in what. So the school district provided the space and then the health care providers they, you said they agreed to provide routine supplies and also basically, and this is the big thing, to send their staff over. That's correct. So are they sending docs or nurse practitioners or does it depend on the day? We have consistent providers. So currently we have Dr. Heather Link who is a pediatrician through Primary Peeds and Elizabeth McDonald who is a nurse practitioner through Primary Peeds. They share the responsibility for Primary Peeds and then we have Sherry LaRose who is a physician assistant through the community health centers of Burlington. And so, and then the the billing works just like it normally would. Whatever insurance the students have. That's right. Nothing changes about the billing. So what's what's innovative is the fact that students have to don't have to go to their doc. The doc comes to them. And so the partnership there is that is that the school district provides the space and the coordination and a lot of the logistical work in making this happen. The docs come and provide some routine supplies and then nothing is different about billing. It would be as if the student had gone to the doctor's office. Right. The biggest difference being the student gets to remain in class until two minutes before. Right. The doctor's ready. And then 15 minutes after the visit they're back upstairs in their class learning and our single moms are still on the job. Right. And they're having to leave work to come get their child because they're sick and they can't stay in school. That's really one of our biggest goals is okay the parents at work if possible and to keep these kids in school learning. That's great. So the access and transportation barriers are just poof. Gone. Great. Thank you. Keeps kids in school and parents working. What is your percentage of new Americans in Winooski? Hi. I think off the top of my head probably over 50 percent. Thank you. Representative Brady. Thank you. You mostly asked my question representative James. I was trying to make sure I was straight on the billing. So I wonder given the student population and the high poverty rate in the student population. So most I'm guessing are on some kind or their health insurance is through a public you know publicly supported. Do you find then in the clinic you're have to you are helping families navigate that at all? Is it helping getting people registered? Do you have you know what happens if a child isn't on a plan already? Are you able to provide some services to sort of connect that family with what they might qualify for and how to do that? So 98 percent of our kids here in the district are on Medicaid and for families whose Medicaid has lapsed or they do not have Medicaid we do not turn them away. The doctors still see them. The community health centers of Burlington have a sliding scale for patients that do not have insurance based on their income. They work with that. Primary PEDE sets up their own alternative program to reach and to work with the families if needed. But they both have social workers on site that we can connect with that then work with the families to get either their Medicaid reinstated or to get them signed up for Medicaid. Thank you. Anyone else? Thank you so much. This is it's really exciting to hear what you've accomplished in Winooski. It's just very exciting. I continue to wonder given the access that you have in Winooski to other services how how I suppose in other communities they'll they'll be accessing different resources. So I think I'm going to leave that as my own question going forward. I'm not asking you to think about other communities when you've done so well with your own. Any other questions? Colin do you want to add anything at this point? Yes thank you chair Webb. Good to see everybody and thanks for having me. As a former resident of Winooski it is always wonderful to hear about the amazing things that Winooski schools are doing. So thanks Elizabeth for sharing your perspective and thanks committee for taking time on this issue. I have some prepared remarks that you can see on their website but I'll kind of pull some key components out as it relates to H106. So for the record I'm Colin Robinson the political director at Vermont NEA. I think the testimony you just heard sort of speaks to the value and import of H106 and the pilots that are contemplated in the bill. And obviously we all know that COVID-19 has exposed a lot of societal challenges and complexities that our students and families and all citizens have been facing for a long time. For those of you that have been on this committee for some time you'll know that whether it's classroom educators nurses administrators school board members they've all been talking about the incredible complex needs students and families have been coming to and bringing with them to school for a long time for the past decade or so in particular. And the pandemic has only exacerbated that. I mean that's why the legislature in previous sessions has looked at things like adverse childhood experiences and how do you support students in their ability to learn because our members and I think all of you know that a student can only access their learning when they're able to have their basic needs met when they feel safe when they feel like they're in a place where that learning is going to allow them to be successful. And that's sort of the promise of H106 you know that we can pilot out some of the good work that many communities like Winooski and Molly Stark and Bennington are already doing build upon that work and perhaps some of those communities say we want to take it to a next level or places where they've had some conversations about trying to make a step in this direction because they know their student needs are so great and the community needs are so great. You know the reality is schools are doing a lot of things that schools weren't doing 50 years ago let alone 15 years ago. I mean schools now have and I'm sure Liz and others can speak to this as well as anybody but you know things like washer and dryer so you can clean kids clothing because that's not something they have access to at home and in order for students to feel like they're going to be able to be a successful learner they need to feel like they have dignity and self-worth in who they are right. So to that end what H106 is building upon is a national trend in the national model there are 5,000 quote-unquote community schools across the nation and I think next week the community is going to have an opportunity to learn from the Learning Policy Institute about this model and what it looks like in places across the country and I think what makes it really exciting in a Vermont context is our schools are already the heart and center of our community in so many ways and people see them as institutions that serve multiple purposes already so there isn't sort of a cognitive barrier to this notion that a school would also be a place where you know maybe you're having seniors come and get their audiology services maybe you have parents coming in to receive some additional supports around completing their reach-up benefits so they don't have to drive 45 minutes to the closest DCF office to do that because people already understand that our community centers are our schools. So a couple specific things around H106 and I heard the deputy secretary's testimony earlier this week and I just wanted to speak to that briefly. Yeah so first of all I just want to say I think the time is now and I think representative Brady used the term kind of turbo charge that I think is really appropriate for this moment I think as I said and I think you all know the challenges of the pandemic have only exacerbated existing issues and schools are trying to work to figure out how we support our students and families as we emerge from this pandemic and waiting to do this because it is a pilot we don't believe is necessary we believe that since it is a challenge by choice model this is not saying you have to do this this is saying hey if you're ready to do this here's some additional resources for you to step into this work to embrace this work to build community additional community input and perhaps build upon either successful work that's already going on and your recovery plans or successful work that places like Winooski and Molly Stark have been doing and they want to deepen into this even more so those kind of two two points is a challenge by choice and we do believe that the time is now the deputy secretary spoke to the grant amount and definitely you sort of understand that point and think that there's probably reason to consider what she was talking about in terms of removing some of the kind of specific metrics in there what I do think would be important for the committee to consider if that is a direction you're going is thinking about having a minimum number of pilots because we don't want a situation where one district comes in with a proposal that takes up you know two-thirds of the allowable amount right not because they might not have great ideas and wanted to do good work but if the true idea is to build out a number of pilots that you can look back on in a couple of years and say oh this really worked here this is a place where we can build out you want to have a certain number of pilots out in the field obviously the build currently is built around the concept of 10 I think 10 is a nice number but perhaps there's a way to build in some flexibility around the the amounts there that the deputy secretary spoke to the other points around the grant specifically that she mentioned her testimony seemed seemed fine and appropriate the final point I want to lift up in in this conversation as you move forward is this notion of a community school's coordinator position I think we can all think of really great ideas that we've experienced in our community space or in our work and whatever that might look like that haven't reached their full potential because there wasn't one person owning that work and I think what you heard in the presentation about Winooski is that a little bit really own this work like this was a deep passion of hers to bring to fruition and I think that that points to the need for somebody to own this work and I think you also heard in Andrew LaBarges testimony that Molly Stark's model emerged with he kind of referenced somebody who is there on the weekends and in the parking park in the parking lot it was because there's a my understanding is there's a specific staff member that had a vision and wanted to help create that vision and make it a reality to support students and families and I think one of the challenges that when represent James and represent Weber down there might have heard in Molly Stark is that some of those things have not they're not existing at the level that they perhaps were 10 or 15 years ago when there is ability to have somebody who is owning that work so I just want to lift up the notion of having a community school's coordinator is really important and impactful to the fidelity of them the community school's model because when you have somebody who owns that work who is able to build lasting deep relationships with community stakeholders to maximize those resources like has been done in Wanooski where it's it's not adding to school costs but rather bringing in resources that help build out student supports so they can actually be successful learners that's what we're talking about because you know public schools do so much to support children and families but they bring with them so much to their schools and the impact their ability to learn and if we're able to break down barriers and build connectivity inside a school setting to help our students be even more successful that's the promise of H106 and that's the promise of the community school's model and more importantly I think that's the opportunity that we have now as we look to recovery from pandemic so I'll pause there happy to answer questions but really appreciate that your committee is taking consideration of this and that you're talking with the Appropriations Committee about the resources to make this happen. Sorry questions, comments, Representative James. Yeah just a comment. Colin thank you so much for being here. I did have Aaron Repradi and I did have a check-in last night with Deputy Secretary Boucher and a solution I think we came up with to your question about the grant amount was that we simply say that the grants would provide up to $110,000 so that if there were a small school that applied where that needed less funding that that would be okay so that we might potentially wind up funding more than 10 grants so I think I hope you agree that that was sort of an elegant solution. That sounds wonderful and I appreciate that you both were able to dig into that a little bit because when I heard this testimony I was understood the intent but wanted to make sure that we didn't lose opportunity as well. Yeah and we talked kind of at length about the community school coordinator position and I think we're all in agreement that that's the heart of the grant. So in terms of planning with that does that seem like a reasonable amount from your experience? Yes I mean I think grant-wise we ended up with in the ballpark of like 20 to maybe 30,000 to get started up but that included some equipment that was needed vaccine refrigeration we also paid an additional nurse for some time to come in and actually measure all of this data collected all and measure it all and so she did get paid a stipend. We formed an advisory council which we still have it meets three times a year and we use some of that grant money to pay those staff members and students who stay after school to chat about the school-based health center and next steps. So overall that's pretty much where we were at. Thank you Representative Brady. Lowered my hand but didn't unmute. I just want to make sure Colin you're comfortable with the language around extended time but certainly support that I think it's really important. Also know teacher time and exactly how that is accounted for can get sticky sometimes. Yeah absolutely no thanks for that question I think you know we would one of the most the things that make community school successful is there's deep buy-in from the full community and conversation among all stakeholders and in the that's why teacher voice is really important to be part of it and we think in order for it to be successful that needs to be part of it so we would expect that those conversations would happen at the local level because you know as I think you've heard from the two educators today there is a deep passion and commitment to the success of of students and a willingness to start figure out what that would look like at the nitty gritty level at the local in local conversations. So appreciate you flagging that and appreciate the question. Representative Harrison. First Chair Webb I want to go last because I want to veer off of 106. Well we got Colin online but I want your permission. Okay I want to keep us focused on this topic first. That's fine. Community schools. Representative Conlon. Thanks my question is similar to what I asked with Mr. Lamar's teacher from Molly Stark and I don't know this will send it to my committee members as well as to Colin or anyone else but it's again it's a question of scale and size and you know many of our elementary schools in Vermont are smaller than 100 some are smaller than 50 and I'm just you know thinking to myself you know how many schools in Vermont can take advantage of this in a way that it would be highly effective and if there's a question about you know what is sort of a what it might be a minimum size that would allow for an effective community school. Kind of a rhetorical question if anybody wants to respond they're welcome to. Happy to hear from Colin. Yeah so Representative Conlon a couple things. One is I think that would actually be a really great question for the Learning Policy Institute because I'm sure they could draw upon some experience and knowledge they have from nationwide. I think one of the other things about sort of the pilot notion is in part to try and figure that out a little bit too you know to figure out where it is scalable where maybe we need to think about things perhaps a little bit differently but most importantly I think that with the granting process you know that would be the place where the school would need to quite frankly do that assessment and demonstrate the potential efficacy and ability for their school of whatever size they're envisioning or district to be able to deploy this model in this grant in an effective way because once again it really comes down to kind of the local community buy-in to be successful so but I think the Learning Policy Institute might be able to answer it even more specifically based upon stuff that they know from other parts of the country as well. Representative James and then Brady. Yeah I was just going to say that in the in its most very recent iteration Rep Conlon we tried to address that concern because I had the same thought by expanding that language a little bit especially since I learned which I didn't know anyway that schools aren't fiscal agents so it now says that the coordinator could be full or part-time and then it would allow a district to apply on behalf of eligible and eligible school or schools so there could be sort of a little bit more of a regional approach and that's where the granting process and the testing of this really becomes interesting because then I started in my mind having the question of well then how how big or how dispersed does it become to not be a community school so you know then it's a regional approach so but anyway we thought because of that exact question we thought it might be interesting in the bill to say that the coordinator could be full or part-time and that a district could apply on behalf of a school or a several schools. Some of that may be for council. Yeah Jim already did that. Yeah Jim was in our meeting with Dr. Boucher. I was just going to follow up to that point that maybe I don't know depending on the free and reduced lunch numbers but you know maybe there are scenarios where there are districts that have small schools that are you know facing closure questions all of the seven days cover story this week that you know is there potentially if not in the pilot eventually in something like this a way that a coordinator is helping to coordinate services in a school but also helping to repurpose I'm not sure like that word a school into some other kind of community asset that still has a very community-based kid-centered you know maybe it's a library resource maybe it's a partial health resource and you know that it's maybe maybe maybe huge maybes here another avenue at how we deal with these really small schools and the challenges in some parts of our state. I don't know that was a new thought to me this week in some of as we've just talked about it further. And just to represent James's sorry represent Brady's point real quick you know our former Vermont president Martha Allen lives in Canaan you know and if you ever been to Canaan Canaan's awful far away from basically everything and has a deep affinity for our rural communities and when she first started talking about the notion of community schools and full-service schools it was exactly as you're talking about represent Brady this notion that you know our our schools do exist sometimes as the lone institution in a town you know if the general store doesn't exist maybe this school still exists and without the school but what is there and is there a way to think creatively about creating other supports for the whole community as we figure out you know and our communities evolve so just wanted to lift up that point. Thank you. I actually am going to send you a map that I got from the ALE last year that actually is a map that shows the definition of all our school districts and where all the schools are which I find incredibly helpful in getting a picture of where we are so I will I will send that to Jesse and make it available to everybody it's actually quite helpful as we're thinking especially when you see out in the corner the little cane in school it puts some things into perspective. Are there any further questions related to this topic? I know that Kathleen, Representative James and Brady were working on this I forgot that I wanted to also a Republican in that group and I forgot to connect you and I think Representative Toof and I had talked about maybe him doing it I don't know if you that I'm remembering is also Representative Williams who's up in that corner might be a possibility so I just going to encourage you to in some of the small group conversations to include one of our Republicans and if I just for that one I'm sorry. That would be great one one or both. Jim is working on a updated version of the bill that will incorporate all of Secretary Boucher's kind of comments and concerns so I think she'll be you know I think AOE will be supportive I hope and we are planning to meet with the V's on Monday so maybe y'all could join us. Just like to make sure that we're keeping our party sorted out here. Yep thanks Kate I wasn't even thinking of a party to be honest. I know because we're all we're a good group but yeah we're good. Remember that yeah and Casey and I have been talking sorry Representative Toof and I have been talking about this bill since before we started session and I know he's interested. Great and I also want to get too big but I just want to make sure that we have different voices involved in the small group the group that I think is going to the cafeteria sitting around the table and hammering out these details to bring back to the great reminder that's good. The way I always picture this is you're all in the cafeteria so with that a very interesting conversation. I greatly appreciate this Elizabeth Paris I very much we had two of your students come and perform last year. You're beautiful two students and you know our PA system didn't work well for them but fortunately we have that beautiful video of them and it was really moving. It was sort of I might have even been the last day before we shut down the legislature that they were here. It's pretty beautiful. I'll make that available to other members of the community of the committee as well because it's really moving. So with that then I will represent of Erison if you had another relevant question not necessarily to this topic but question for you. If you don't mind well Collins here and it's not a direct connection to the NEA but it's definitely a connection to the committee in the NEA and they want to weigh on on this. There's a local paper that's distributed probably from Ludlow all the way down into Westminster. It's a mailbox paper so a lot of homes get it and on the front page is an interview with the superintendent of the Wyndham Northeast District and he is said that Act 73 is going to cost their district one million dollars. A he doesn't know that so it's misinformation and B this committee is mentioned in the in the article. I guess my point is that we're just a few weeks from school budgets being voted and for a superintendent to be spreading misinformation or potentially misinformation and citing this committee I find a little bit disturbing and I don't know Collins if you want once again if you punt I'm perfectly fine. All I would say is I if it was I grew up in in Putney in Wyndham Southeast so I'm geographically familiar with Wyndham Northeast. I would just say that that is a district that I know has been going through a lot of challenging governance conversations related to all the things that have been before this committee past and present. So I only offer that as kind of a commentary to I think some of the challenges that that district in particular has going on right now. I think I think they're also one where I believe it's Grafton and Wyndham are trying to correct extract themselves from the district. So I don't know anything beyond that. I will say on 173 obviously there is a direct connection to the waiting study and that's something that I shared and spoke to in this committee the other week. I have no comments on sort of his specific remarks. This may also be related to excess spending threshold crossing the excess spending threshold. I didn't see the article but we are going to be addressing that on Tuesday. That will be we will bring back age 35. I will be at that time seeking a motion to approve and that would get rid of the excess spending threshold for construction related issues. And so I will be making that that available to the committee which would mean that it would then if we pass that if we agree to that then it will go over to wait some means. Anything else then before we end? And if you I'd love to see that article I don't know what article you're talking about. So feel free to I'll get it to you. Thank you. Collin it's not often that you get asked to speak for the superintendents. And I hope I didn't but it is it is a district that has been dealing with a lot of transition and challenges. So all I can say is he didn't do anything to enhance the chances of their project being passed. It's a tough time. Okay so we are finished for today. We'll just take a quick look. I think Jesse and I are still working on our Tuesday schedule. And Jesse and you and I can have a chat afterwards just to see where we are doing. Do you have anything you can tell us for Tuesday? I certainly can. And I want to say to Elizabeth and Collin you're more than welcome to stay but please also feel free to leave as we work on our schedule. Thank you. I really appreciate this opportunity and thank you all for your time. Have a nice day. You too. Jesse do we have any picture of when we're starting on Tuesday yet? I know we're still working on quite a few items. Absolutely so for right now obviously Tuesday morning sometimes is difficult. The schedule of caucuses but I have a committee discussion on construction in the morning if possible. And then following that in the afternoon at one o'clock we'll be hearing on community schools from Anna Mayer at the Warring Policy Institute. Yeah. Following that we have the H35 committee vote excess funding. At two o'clock we have some it's a bit of a mix-up I'm sorry I was trying to keep it consecutive with topics but I think that may be one of the rest of the week situation. So two o'clock we'll be literacy and we'll be hearing from Katie Ballard and a few others. And that's all I have for right now but I'm hoping to fit in the state board following that for Wednesday. I have a lot for the rest of the week but that's just a quick plan for Tuesday. I am looking for us to be at a point where we can actually move the construction bill. So keep that in mind as we're going forward. Literacy we're not quite ready yet. And you're going to hear some lived experiences next week from some people that spent quite a bit of time in our committee last year who have family members that have struggled with with learning to read. What's our third bill? With how yeah we have that done, facilities. 106. This bill. I said that too quietly. I was trying to be. Yeah they're trying to whisper to me. Okay I think we're good. I think that's a sign that we're done for the day.