 Hello everyone and welcome to this 2022 Chitenden Central District of Vermont Senate Candidate Forum. This one-hour event was made possible through a collaboration between the Vermont New American Advisory Council, the Vermont Early Childhood Advisory Alliance, and CCTV Channel 17, Town Meeting Television. My name is Sandrine Kibway. I am the president of the Vermont New American Advisory Council, VINAC. And I'm going to let you, you know, tell you a little bit about VINAC. VINAC is an organization composed of several diverse New American community leaders working to increase civic engagement, dismantle barriers to a sense of belonging and expand opportunities for New American communities to strive socially, culturally, and economically in the state of Vermont. And today, we have the pleasure to welcome five of our Chitenden Central District of Vermont Senate candidates. It is an opportunity for them to give us their perspective and understanding on New American communities' support needs regarding affordable housing, early childhood education and child care, as well as their views on combating racism and promoting a sense of belonging for New Americans families calling Vermont their home. I have joined also a slide changing our programming. So Ali Dieng and myself will be your facilitator tonight. And then Brown from the Vermont Early Childhood Advocacy Alliance will be our timekeeper. And I have to remind candidates that you all have received the questions in advance. And each of you will have two minutes to respond to our questions in addition of one minute and 30 seconds for your closing remarks. And I want to make a correction here. It's two minutes past section. So we have affordable housing, early childhood education and child care, and racism and sense of belonging. I will now give a chance to candidates to introduce themselves. And we have an order. So please pay attention, if you please. So Mr. Phil Barout will be the first. Don Ellis, second. Martine Galeck, third. Her hard man key will be the fourth. And the last but not least, Avanya Vihovsky, responding to those questions or those sections. I do believe that we could go ahead and I will be asking the candidate the first question. Are you ready? I hope so. So introduction and opening statements. This is what you'll be able to do. You'll be able to introduce yourself and to have your opening statement stated now. By answering this, why would you say this election is about? What is a stake in Vermont's lives in general and new Americans in particular? So Mr. Phil Barout, please. The floor is yours. Oh, thank you. And thank you for inviting me tonight. I'm Phil Barout. I've been in the state senate since 2010. And I've seen a number of emergency situations since I've been there. So my first biennium, we had tropical storm Irene. And that took years to respond to. Now we're coming out of the back end of the pandemic. I think we all had our eye on that particular public health crisis. But what was going on at the same time was, and this is now so well documented that it sounds crazy that we ever didn't understand it. But there was a coup attempt at the highest level in Washington to try to steal a democratic election from Americans. And that's the sort of thing that I think people flee other countries to get away from. So more than anything else, this election is about democracy, voting, making sure that people's voting rights are respected. One of the things that I want to point out is that in Montpelier, we have tried a number of times to pass non-citizen voting. And it has been stopped at various levels for different reasons by the governor, among others. But I believe in that. I believe in empowering people that have come here and then making sure their votes count and aren't stolen from them in one procedural way or another. So that's mostly what I think this election is about. There's a whole host of other topics, but that's, that's Paramount. Thank you, Mr. Balu. Don, Alice, please. The floor is yours. You are muted. Yes. I'm honored to be here, Ms. Kubie. And I have a particular affinity for your mission as I was going through and really read your history and read how the work of the various new Americans has come together to focus on the civic democracy piece for your members and the communities they're in and the communities they serve. I can't think of a more important forward-looking piece of work. And it is critical in this time because what is at stake is who is going to be included in our democracy? Who the institutions will support? Will the doors be open? Will they be closed? And what leadership will take us forward post-pandemic as we are reinvesting in people and in some cases investing in the first time in their trajectories towards being able to determine their lives and thrive here in Vermont and in America? I am a human rights commissioner for the state in that role. I've seen some of the ugliest sides of Vermont, but in my life in Vermont, I've seen some of the most beautiful. And I am taken back to how when my children began school in sustainability academy, we all realized that the fact that people from around the globe were sitting with them at the table at lunch and learning together with them was one of the greatest assets Burlington has. And so as my children grew up with people from Nepal and people from Somalia, it is inherent upon me to pave the way so that the history and legacy of some of the isms, the discrimination, the ugliness falls by the wayside. So our young people from across the globe, she has to make a life for them here in Vermont if they go away and come back. Thank you. Next is Mrs. Martin Gulick. The phrase yours. Thank you. Thank you. And I hope you all don't mind. I'm going to put my teacher hat on for a minute and just remind folks, especially as a language teacher, I speak French fluently, but English is my first language. And I know there are folks on this call for whom English is not their first language. So it's important that we all speak slowly and clearly. And I always, I do try to minimize my idioms, although I know I just used one because they can be tricky as well. So I just wanted to say that. So this election is really about choosing someone who's going to go to the Senate and collaborate with others who's going to find creative solutions to our critical problems, who are going to fight, who's going to fight for our children and our families and emphasize early investment in people. What's at stake in the lives of Vermonters, it ranges from the right to bodily autonomy to finding high quality childcare and early ed and making sure that our that our students and our teachers work in schools that are safe and non toxic. This is this is a huge issue that we all know is coming down the pike. We have a lot of aging buildings and I worry about the safety of our students and our and our teaching staff. What's at stake is making sure that our new Americans feel welcome and that they are in schools in culturally responsive environments where the curricula reflects who they are in every way and creating an environment that is safe, free of oppression and free of systemic racism. That is what is at stake here and it's a really important election. It's unprecedented in many ways. So I'm really happy to be here and to be stepping up. And as Phil said, this call to action at this really critical time in our democracy. Thank you. Next will be Mr. hard monkey. The fries yours. Thanks. Thank you so much, Sandrine. And thanks to VNAC and CCTV and the early childhood alliance for this opportunity. Just a quick bit about myself. I've lived and worked in Chittenden County for over 40 years. Raised two adult children here that went through the Burlington school system. K through K through 12 and unfortunately, both live out of state now. My wife, Sydney, was a maternal child nurse and worked with many new American families before she retired. So as others have said, we are in a very pivotal moment in time. We are coming out of hopefully COVID, although it looks like we're not totally out of the woods. We're in a time of heightened racial reckoning starting back with the murder of George Floyd. We are in a time of heightened awareness around sexual harassment and male dominance in our society through the Me Too movement. We are in a pivotal time to save the planet. We've only got a few years left to make sure that our children and grandchildren have a livable planet. I have worked for many years in affordable housing, in community development, in municipal affairs. I've dedicated my career to public service and I feel that in this pivotal time, I want to be part of helping to transform Vermont to be the more inclusive and vibrant, safe, and welcoming place that we know that it can be in spite of some of the evidence to the contrary as we see through microaggressions and acts of racism and systemic racism on a daily basis. Lastly, I'll just mention in addition to my affordable housing experience, most recently I've been working for the office of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders for last year and a half as an outreach representative. So I bring both federal and state policy experience to bear to being in the Senate. Thank you. Thank you. And last but not least at all, Mrs. Tanya, Mr. Mrs. Tanya, Vahovosky. I'm sorry if I just destroyed your last name. Great. No worries at all. Thank you so much and thank you for hosting this and giving us the opportunity to come to you and discuss the issues. I'm Representative Tanya Vihovsky and I represent Essex Town in the House. I work as a social worker and I work every day with people struggling with the status quo. I grew up in a single parent working class home and I've never seen people in positions of power that represented me or were truly speaking and fighting for people like mine. To me this election is about transformation. We have an opportunity with a huge amount of turnover to make sure that we have new and different voices in policymaking positions. It is about lifting up people's different life experiences to speak to how Vermont has not been working for them. It's time to ensure that we have leaders who make space for everyone to speak, not just the people in their networks. In my time in the House I was often alone or in a very small minority speaking up to issues of economic, racial, social and climate justice and I should not be in the minority. And we have an opportunity right now to make sure that I'm not. We are at a pivotal moment in Vermont and across the nation and we cannot let the status quo continue. We need all of us together to build a Vermont where everyone is heard, safe and knows that they belong and we will not build that by continuing to elect the same voices and the same people who've been hoarding power throughout this country's history. Everything's at stake. We're in a housing crisis, an opiate crisis, a mental health crisis, a child care crisis and a climate catastrophe. And still in the midst of a global pandemic that has disproportionately impacted new Americans and people of color in Vermont. The list of crises goes on and on and it touches every aspect of our life. And now is the time to come together to lift the voices of those who have always been shut out of the conversation to build a vibrant, diverse and welcoming community and fight for truly intersectional policy that breaks down the barriers to life, liberty and justice for all. Thank you so much for all your responses. Ali. All right. Thank you all for the passion that you have demonstrated so far here and for your willingness to serve us all at the State House. This question is about housing affordability in the state of Vermont and each one of you have two minutes and the question is how do you propose to make housing more affordable in Vermont and in your district? And do you support rent control and justice eviction? And please elaborate on each base on your answers. And lastly, how do we enrich and sustaining the substantial amount of funding to combat homelessness in the heart? So we will reserve the order, reverse it a little bit and we will start with Representative Weiszowski. Thank you. Just to clarify, I'm answering all three subset of the questions in two minutes or each one gets two minutes? All of them in two minutes. The housing is about two minutes and you can pick which one you can expand on. Perfect. Thank you. So it's my view that we have to take a multifaceted approach to housing affordability that does include new construction, transitioning rentals and mobile home parks to owner run cooperatives as well as investing in housing first models of housing and support. We also, however, need to ensure that we're shifting the conversation from affordable housing from simply rentals to affordable home ownerships. In the United States, the average Black family has won 13th the wealth of the average White family and that's largely due to redlining policies that shut people out of the housing ownership market. So we need to further invest in programs that are revolving loan funds and grants to allow for affordable home ownership for first generation homeowners, BIPOC individuals, and people who have largely been shut out of that market. I do support rent control and just cause eviction. I worked really hard in my committee on government operations on the Burlington just cause eviction charter change and was devastated when we weren't able to override the governor's veto. And I think that we need to build a multifaceted approach here where we have multiple towns asking for charter changes like this, which will help signal to the General Assembly that there is an appetite for statewide change in this direction. And we need to implement tenant protection basic that it ensures that everyone who is renting has access to safe, affordable, accessible and stable housing. And when the ARPA money runs out, we absolutely must make sure that every single person who is experiencing houselessness in Vermont has a roof over their head. But I do think we need to move away from models of transitional and contingent housing and towards models, as I said, like the housing first model, premised on the fact that housing is a basic human right and that permanent housing is the most stable, humane and cost effective way to ensure that everyone is housed. We have models like this already existing in Vermont, and we need to invest in them further. We also have the highest rate of vacant homes in Vermont. And largely these are homes owned by someone out of state who could pay into a system to ensure everyone has a first home. Thank you so much. And Ed Hart. Thanks, Ellie. So, yes, we are in the midst of the worst affordable housing crisis that I've seen in my over 30 years of working in housing and community development in the state. And I have been someone who has been at the state house every day fighting for more affordable housing for over 24 years. I helped write the state's co-op housing enabling legislation that has allowed enabled places like the Flynn Avenue co-op, the Bright Street co-op to exist. And also for mobile home parks, mobile home co-ops to exist around the state. I think one of the critical things that we need to keep doing is investing more in affordable housing. We have a massive deficit that comes as a result of chronic underfunding of housing in the state of Vermont, whether it's the creation of new affordable housing or rehabilitation of existing substandard housing, or whether it's investing in rental assistance, because we all know that our wages in Vermont are too low and that the market rents that are out there are not affordable to most working families in the state of Vermont, including most new Americans. I've been a leader in promoting shared equity home ownership and I'm really proud of the work that Champlain Housing Trust is doing to promote BIPOC home ownership, especially through new development that they're doing in Winooski. I'm one of the founding board members of the Champlain Housing Trust and helped develop that shared housing equity model. I also was a 30-year board member of Northgate Apartments, which is holy resident owned and controlled. One of the things that has been a feature of my affordable housing advocacy is to make sure that residents achieve control through either home ownership or through cooperative ownership or some form of neutral home ownership. I helped write Burlington's Just Cause Eviction. I can't read that. Dan, is that time up? Or is that 30 seconds? Hold it right up. Is that time up? 30 seconds. Thank you. It's really hard to read. I helped write Burlington's Just Cause Eviction ordinance. It was something I worked on 30 years ago when I was a city counselor in Burlington and Bernie Sanders was mayor. I was like Tanya devastated when the mayor vetoed that and it lost the override vote, lost by one vote. I think we need to sustain the ARPA investments that we've made in affordable housing. We need to look at new revenues. We need to make sure that wealthy Vermonters pay their fair share and there are a number of small tax measures that I think can help. A mansion tax is one. Surcharges on short-term rentals, which are making it harder. They're taking rentals off the market, making it harder to find affordable rentals in the state. As Tanya mentioned, we have vacant housing all over the state. We should figure out a way to tax second homes more. And I long have advocated for a surcharge for hotels and motels. We have a great tourism industry and we should tap that for additional revenues. Thank you. Thank you. And yellow is 30 seconds. Red means your time is up. Okay. Thank you. And we are going with commissioner Gulik. Thank you, Ali. I agree with a lot of what Tanya and Earhart have already said. And as Earhart said last night, finding a solution to affordable housing and housing in general is not rocket science. It takes some political will for sure and some investment. So, yeah, creating more, you know, increasing density in urban areas, I think is really important so that you can preserve, you know, our mountain tops and our farms and nature here in Vermont, which certainly helps our brand, the Vermont brand. But we do need to increase density in our towns and in our urban environments. We need to properly fund organizations like the Vermont Housing Conservation Board, which I think has already been mentioned, and encourage ADUs, those accessory dwelling units. We do have a mobile home park here in the north end, the new north end of Burlington that is a co-op. And that's been a very successful model as well. I support rent control and just cause eviction. As I said last night, we know that wealth is built already when someone owns a home. That is almost a given here in this country. So to be able to build a fortune on top of the wealth that already comes with home ownership, especially in a time of crisis, seems unconscionable to me. And we should be able to put restrictions in that provide support to renters. I've lived in a country like Germany where I worked for a couple of years and rented. In Germany, about almost 70% of the population rents and renters are protected, absolutely with things like just cause eviction and rent control. So these are things that we definitely need to look at. In terms of the ARPA funds running out, I know that last night I mentioned cities like Houston, Texas have been really successful in lowering the number of houseless folks. And they've done that by really organizing, I see the red, okay, organizing their public funding. And then the private sector came on board. But I will stop talking. Thank you. Thank you so much. And Commissioner Don Ellis. Thanks very much. I've been spending a great deal of time listening to people who are experiencing housing and stability in Burlington and the nearby areas, really spending time in the late evenings listening for ideas. And as a human rights commissioner for the state, I've had the chance to tap ideas from across the region as well. And I am reminded that the American model for housing and single family home with one family is really an anomaly. And in our new American communities, I hear again and again that the tightness and the importance of extended family and that a family is a family that has children. But if it has been able to come with uncles and aunts and grandparents, there are nieces and nephews and that the raising of children is a family endeavor that is much broader and more encompassing than the American concept of family and single family home. I was in Burlington City Hall today because I was really following up on what seemed to be a real problem with the zoning that we have, whether it's intended or not, but having pushed out an extended family of new Americans some years back and I realized that they had had their federal rights potentially encroached if that was the case where neighbors were like, wow, there are too many people in that house they need to go and they left and they sold really quickly. And I am reminded that zoning can be a very easy fix if it is called out as prohibitive along with looking at what are the barriers to home ownership and to home ownership as an asset for a community. So there is a lot of leadership within the new American communities already. Some of the ideas from around the country that I have heard from people with housing and stability are teach us what we need not just only to own the home but to be able to be the landlord of people within our communities and we can cut out middlemen in the services that help preserve home ownership. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner and Senator Gilbeiro. Long time ago I was a student in graduate school and I was renting and my landlord came to my door one day and he said the city just inspected and all the wiring is substandard so it's going to cost me a lot to fix it so I'm going to have to almost double your rent and I said you can't double my rent to bring it up to code. I'm paying right now for an apartment that's at code he told me look it's a free enterprise system if you won't pay it someone will and of course he was wrong this was California and there are very strong laws there protecting renters and so within a week he had to admit that he was wrong didn't raise my rent and things went on as before here protections for your job or your rental are very weak and I've advocated for a long time to change both right now we're an at will state which means you can be fired for any reason at any time by your employer and I think we should be a just cause state when it comes to losing your job there should be a reason similarly there should be a reason for if you're not going to be able to continue in your rental home there should be a good reason for that so I do support just cause eviction then when I came to Burlington and I went to buy my first house the down payment was prohibitively expensive and so I had to wait three years to be able to save the money so one of the first things I did when I got into the legislature was I worked with the Vermont housing finance agency we created the down payment assistance program so you can now get a house with zero down payment if you qualify for that program very proud of it and I think we should do more like it and thank you thank you I would like to remind to please to remind you to please focus your answers and really come to the perspective of supporting new americans community in the state of Vermont and because there were a lot of general views and perspective being given we have a two minutes of opportunity for any of you to elaborate a little bit more there is five of you so it's going to be probably 30 second each of you will have if you would like to elaborate a little bit more focusing really on new americans and expenses thank you well if not we can move forward with the the the top oh yes let me show you yes I I I take the 30 second offer and I did want to mention that there is a hidden problem in new americans going through the process of getting homes when the loan falls through and there are hidden problems when realtors only show certain homes to new americans and both of those are against the law and we don't yet have a a a stringent enough testing and support to call out when people are breaking the law to be like oh we don't want to sell to you which happens in our state and it's very behind the scenes but it can keep a family who's prepared and ready to buy from actually doing the deal and I will stand up shine light that this happens and help strengthen the laws to make sure that new americans who are moving into home ownership have all the protections that every one of us should and does have thank you yes very hard sendering um so just also pivoting off what don was saying I mean one of the things that we can do is uh you know it is not that easy to prove housing discrimination which I think disproportionately affects uh new americans and and BIPOC the BIPOC community and I think there are ways that we can look at strengthening our state's fair housing law in order to to make it easier to uh to to prove that discrimination and get justice for new americans and and BIPOC individuals that families that may have been discriminated excuse me discriminated against the other thing I'll say and I know I've I've heard this from new american families that I've spoken to um we seem to be building mostly one and two bedroom apartments um around the state uh and you know traditionally new american families often are more multi-generational and need uh need larger larger homes and larger apartments so one of the things I would like to see is that the nonprofit sector that is building affordable housing build more um three and four bedroom apartments as well thank you yes representative thank you so much I certainly will you know echo off of the need to really tailor housing to the communities that need it most I also think it's an important point to talk about the larger economic system that we're talking about that is really shutting out certain voices and really building up and making investments in our new american communities in ways that allow them not only to buy into non-profit affordable housing but to make a living for themselves whether that be through revolving loan funds that allow people to start businesses or whether that be investing in a micro transit bus that goes to the new farms for new american plots so that people can get there more easily we need to look beyond simply making housing more affordable but also to making our economy more accessible thank you yes commissioner martin hey thank you I think I saw Don came up as well um yeah I just wanted to say if you know if we look at housing as an area that has um been driven by systemic racism racism is so many of our institutions have in our country then obviously dismantling that has to be one of our top priorities and I was going to bring up economic development as um representative by off ski brought up one of the things we do in the burlington school district when we for example have a need for an event to be catered we always look to new americans to um support their businesses and we recently at um our retreat we were really fortunate to be able to um get some wonderful samali food and I know that the woman who was able to provide that food works out of a kitchen at the old north end center so she has this kitchen that is provided to her and it's a shared kitchen um but that so to make those kinds of resources available to folks um is really really important um but I also just wanted to say you know at some point I hope we talk about prop two because that is something that will help hopefully dismantle some of the systemic racism that that we have here in vermont which I support fully thank you thank you thank you all so we're going to move to the early childhood education and childcare section and I'm going to read you um the the question that we have to answer uh a reminder that it is two minutes thank you Dan for the excellent job you are doing um so the first question is based on the legislative report of the vermont childcare and early childhood education system analysis what will you be uh what would what would be your preference of the governance system of this analysis and why the second question is from your perspective as a future senator do you believe that there is an element or elements missing before the legislature takes action around this report if yes what will you be what will what will be that or those elements what are in the third question was uh what are our is what are the factors contributing to the lack of quality and affordable childcare in the state of vermont and uh we are going to start with uh adieu boulif senator bangu uh sorry my dog was barking there I had to have the mute so act 166 which was the state's attempt to get into the business of supporting pre-k education it provides 10 hours of subsidized education for kids three through five and that tells you what the problem is there isn't a parent out there who will say oh I need 10 hours of uh of subsidized childcare um it's it's a taste of what we need but basically what we have always done is dipped our toe in the water and then refused to pay for the the the whole shot of what we need so um I think the way to do that is to fight the bullet in terms of the larger costs and that report that you mentioned lays those costs out but it doesn't have to be the state that picks them up completely so for me the biggest missing piece is uh employers especially large businesses should be either providing childcare or subsidizing childcare um and the pandemic showed us if parents don't have childcare provided by someone it's going to be employers who suffer in the economy overall that feels the drain so Vermont businesses for social responsibility has always been very helpful in terms of talking with the legislature about how can employers be partners in providing childcare and early education we need to be doing more of that and especially where concerns large employers problem being that Vermont doesn't have a lot of large employers most of the employers and businesses in our state are small that is under 10 employees and that gets a little dice here to pass through the legislature but that's definitely where we need to go is a partnership between employers and the state and then the state has to bite the bullet and pay its fair share thank you uh we are going to move forward with um and I'm sorry to it uh with um commissioner uh Don Ellis thank you I'm thinking with you today um and as I sit in this community again I want the lessons for policy to come from the assets of the community that are already understood and known in the different new american communities and so what I see and what I've heard is the incredible importance again of family in the development of the young person especially in the young person who has come from elsewhere and come to america and has very important parts of culture that they want to retain from their history language that they want to retain from from their from their ancestors and from their family still abroad and I think we we miss something if we only think of one model of child care as send your kid off uh when people have lots of money they get to make choices about how much time the parent the mother um spends with the very young child to give them as much of the understanding of the family as possible what if we were to take that kind of priority and model to what early education could be and how we could support it I think we then look to flexible models where it might be um how much child care you need which isn't necessarily farming them off all the time and isn't necessarily the 10 hour model either but where uh a balance is there where sometimes and we see this in like work with the family room where sometimes the parent is still in the mix but it's a chance to socialize and a chance to have access to early learning um diversification more time in the english speaking world a chance for a little balance so it doesn't have to necessarily be in that three to five or birth to five category that sending them off is always the best model and I think we need choices we need to honor that parents themselves are spending time doing this work and to provide traveling resources to those families and to support the development of small and micro business ownership for that flexibility in our new american families thank you uh commissioner gulik thank you some green um yes so I I see adan haji on the call hello adan adan and I served on the school board together and um I think one of the things that we saw over and over again um and we're seeing now in a big in a big way is this lack of um labor we have a labor shortage that is yet another crisis that we're facing um but we also heard over and over again from our bipoc students and our bipoc families that there are not enough educators of color in our system um so we need to do a better job of encouraging our young people to go into teaching to go into early education and to go into child care um it is I can attest to the fact that it is a great career it is extremely meaningful and it's very important um it is hard uh but it is um a career where you can make a livable wage and I I do think we need to do a better job of encouraging folks to pursue that we need to encourage our higher institutions to partner with our schools and our districts and our communities to provide affordable education to all of our students and to really again encourage young people to go into these careers um and I really appreciate you sharing that document with us that really underlines the path forward to a better child care system and really the the main focus I would say or one of the main focuses about document was having a more centralized approach so really having one agency within government that looks at the whole system organizes it um and has a sort of wraparound collaborative approach that is from what I can see the most important thing that we can do right now um so I would follow the lead um I also think that advocating for a paid family leave is has been proven to pay dividends again that's an investment it's not just a financial outlay um but it it is so incredibly important has been proven to work in so many countries all over the world thank you thank you mr hurrah thank you thanks again sandrine um so uh I as uh someone who led the vermont affordable housing coalition for many years uh really appreciated the collaboration with the vermont early childhood advocacy alliance housing advocates I think have long recognized the importance of quality child care and universal pre-k for the cognitive emotional and and intellectual development of children I mean the first years first five years of life we know are the most important for laying the foundation for future future success and really appreciate having worked for a number of years with the alliance on moving forward um child the importance of child care and funding especially for subsidized child care slots as I think I mentioned earlier my wife Sydney who's a retired maternal child nurse started her career not working in early childhood and I think as a child care worker and I think one of the things that we one of the many things that we undervalue is a society child care workers they are underpaid they are in many instances don't have sufficient ongoing ongoing training and we have through the pandemic lost countless countless quality child care centers our countless slots we have seen a lot of folks move out of early childhood and and into other other professions so we have as I think someone mentioned before an absolute crisis in in child care we need to find ways to fund subsidized slots to provide ongoing training for child care workers to make quality child care centers financially viable and to pay people what a livable wage that they can live on and some of the things that we can do is help with housing assistance and hiring incentives and also with loan forgiveness for folks who invest in studying early childhood and then don't have the money to pay off their loans I see I have time maybe I can say a little bit more in the open comment section thanks thank you and representative Tanya by Hovsky thank you so in terms of governance my initial thought would be to consolidate into the existence existing agency of education as child care is early education and I would also hope there would be economies of scale that would allow for the sharing of resources and lower administrative costs and I think we need to move towards looking at child care as a public good in the early education and investment in our future that it is however when looking at that survey it looks it seems that that's not the most popular governance model among stakeholders so I would really want to better understand why their preference would be to create a new agency as I'm always wary about recreating bureaucracies that already exist and I wonder if there's a way to solve the challenges within the agency of education that might make this a more palatable option in terms of are there elements missing of course there are elements missing we need to yes ensure equity of access and we need to ensure a an equity curriculum but we also need to ensure that we have culturally appropriate and accessible child care centers as has been pointed out so much of our education model is really grounded in upper middle class white values and we need to make sure that we are really shifting that model to make sure that everyone has access to a high quality child care system that works for them and works for their family and responds to the culture that they are bringing into the table I would propose that we set up a task force to inform this that really lifts up the voices of those for whom the system is not working or for whom the system is not welcoming including new americans people of children with disabilities people who cannot currently afford child care and our early educators the factors contributing to the lack of quality affordable child care are many not the least of which is low pay and high education cost and so we need to ensure that we are paying our child care workers livable wages and there's no way to do this without subsidizing the system because our child care centers can't afford to pay more without charging more which makes the system more unaffordable we also need to invest in forgivable loans and grants to make the education for early educators more affordable thank you and just to let you know that because of time we are going to ask you to add more comments or more information that you will that you might want to give us and the public in your closing statement we are quite late we are about 10 minutes late so we're going to move forward with the third section Ali thank you again for participating and for coming and for expressing all your view about those issues and this one particularly is about combating racism and increasing a sense of belonging and please answer from the perspective of new americans and a we want to ask what are the factors contributing to the lack of a sense of belonging from the new american community and by park community in general the second one is do you think that there is a rise of white supremacy in the united states and lastly what do you think the state should be doing more in order to increase civic engagement among new american communities and for this one we are going to start with uh don ellis and then followed by martin correct thank you this is near and near to all that i believe and to find the ways to make sure that we are becoming more and more inclusive not less and less indeed in my work as a vermont human rights commissioner i have seen the rise of white supremacy in vermont overt covert has been around a long long time and now it's coming from the back room into the front hallways and the streets and leaving tire tracks and worse um so i will stand up for a vermont that includes us all with every breath that i take and i cannot think of a more beautiful asset that our state has than its people and especially when i think about this central district this is the district that is the most diverse district in the entire state of vermont it has the most languages spoken it has an asset that is underutilized by the whole state think about how little foreign language is learned in the course of vermont education and yet how many people in their families are speaking four languages five languages we are missing the disconnect of the opportunity and the asset of the new american community for vermont at large i would love to hold that community up um in terms of state civic engagement i've been pondering this for this forum and uh we do need to move to new and increasing ways to to systematically be able to hear from the new american community who cannot yet vote i am very interested in the local voting movement when husky has modeled but i'm curious about the idea of can we create a way for the new american who has not yet got citizenship to go to the polls and participate in the same way that provisional ballot allows someone to participate before it is determined that they can indeed vote at that place can we can we collect that data in a separate way to show what a new american community believes thank you uh commissioner click yeah yes thanks thank you ellie oh i hear an echo um so the first thing we have to do i i'm what i'm hearing from this question is why do bIPOC folks feel a lack of sense of community and i think the most important thing we can do as a community is listen um we have in the berlington school district a racial justice academy and two days ago i had the honor of being able to sit in the hunt middle school auditorium and listen to our students speak for about two hours and what they shared with us um was incredibly powerful the harm that they experience in terms of microaggressions coming from not only their peers but their teachers it's um it gives it gives pause and um it it's um very worrisome we need to do better in our community but allowing students the voice to to be heard and to really take action and be leaders in our community it's incredibly powerful organizations that for example allie was a big part of parent university extremely important also um our youth and family engagement team that particular organization which is made up of all different kinds of folks from our community age age wise culture wise language wise um we look at again what are the issues that our students are facing and one thing that bubbled right to the top is our students of color want to know why are they being excluded from ap classes and high level honors courses um we were able to figure out it's because early on in their education because of math they get tracked and that causes this domino effect so these are things that we need to look closely at and try to fix extremely extremely important again i want to bring up proposition two i believe that our constitution is a living document that should be amended and um being able to call out injustices like slavery and indentured servitude and change that narrative it's extremely important for our society and our community thank you senator field beta so i want to go at this in a slightly different direction um one of the things that i think everybody agrees on is that the bica bipop community and the new american community are under resourced in the community at large but in education and so when i was the chair of senate education i brought my committee to winewski and i brought them to uh burlington high school we talked with the superintendents they said their number one ask was that we changed the formula for how we fund english language learners among other categories and so it took four years from that point i put in two bills to do that eventually this session we managed to change that mathematical formula so going forward winewski and burlington will receive more help for every bipop student every um new american student every english language learner kids in poverty and that will be a huge benefit um to the community at large it will allow us to provide more liaisons more cultural specialists more translators everything that we need to make that sense of community and transition that we've been talking about shout out to martin uh i was working inside the state house on this she was working outside and together that was a coalition that was very hard to oppose so the coalition outside was lots of districts across the state not just urban districts but rural districts too and people like martin were very vocal pushed very hard and that prevented one thing from happening which was after all of this work there was a move right at the end to pull english language learners out of the formula all together and put them into a different category where they would be easier to underfund that didn't happen because of martin's work and the work we did in the state house and people should know about that that's going to be a big change in burlington in the news thank you very much and representative um my house thank you so much this is a complicated question i could probably talk a lot about i think it's important for us to challenge the idea that any one community is a monolith and that we can have one person speak for a community or that we as people who have held systemic power know better for any community than what they need that is just and what i mean by that is that we need to really invest in building new american owned businesses and new american organizations that tell us what it is they need to be to feel more welcome in vermont i do know one issue from my work with connecting cultures is that language access is a huge problem lots of places have translated materials as an afterthought or don't actually have anyone on staff that can interact in a language and will ask family and friends to interpret in inappropriate situations and so i do think we need to really invest in stronger guidance and education for language access particularly in our professions that are receiving state and federal dollars our teaching professions our social work professions and that needs to be foundational learning my partner is a black man and nothing opened my eyes to how pervasive in city is in dangerous the racism in vermont is then walking alongside him and we need to as white people stand up and name that and not protect the comfort of our white friends over the safety of our bipak friends and family and we need to and that doesn't mean that i know what he my husband needs we need to really invest in hearing from the people who are most impacted by systemic racism in our country as to what they need and we need to listen we need to take action on the things that they have been screaming to us that they need have needed for a long time and as a nation we have terrible civic engagement i would like to see us invest in universal civics education so that every child no matter their background has civics education but i also want to see us invest in civics education for adults who haven't gotten that in an accessible and interpreted translatable way and thank you thank you very much it is am i going to get a chance to answer this question oh yes that's right you guys passed i'm sorry yes you're right no worries no worries mr hard banking you thank you thanks i guess what i want to start off by saying is that um now i'm from an immigrant family myself i was not born in this country um my family left war torn europe in the early fifties i came over here when i was a little kid um and uh though i'm a white immigrant um and you know can't uh fully understand and experience some of the discrimination that i know black new americans have experienced i did experience some of that discrimination in the in the fifties and it was it was painful and from that experience i think you know i i have a little bit of an inkling of what new americans from africa from napal from baton from all over the world have experienced that are not part of our predominant white white culture um why is there a lack of sense of belonging well frankly it starts with the fact that we're still one of the whitest states in the country and folks of of color do not see as many people that look like them that look like you here and that i think creates right from the start a sense of of just difference and and an alienation we do not have we have so many black leaders on on this on this call in this in this forum but we still as a state do not have enough people of color in leadership roles across the state and that is one of the things that we really need to work on and really need to promote i agree with what has been said about making sure that we center new americans and people of color if elected i would look forward to working with vnac because you folks need to be voices at the table we need to hear what your needs are and i would say you know my initial understanding is as we talked about before we need to help new americans build wealth through home ownership through credit to start businesses and we need to make sure that the curriculums that your children have in school reflect their cultural their cultural values and their their backgrounds and was proud to work with phil on the ethnic studies bill that passed a couple of years ago that ensures that we see that in in vermont curriculums wonderful thank you again um and sundry yes yes we we are unfortunately out of time i want to thank you for your presence here today this was a great a great a great forum we do appreciate your time that you took from you know campaigning to come and talk to us one thing is for certain now you have the other opportunities to come and discuss um the needs of new americans and hopefully it will be in person in our communities in our neighborhoods as we love to see you in action but not only in words so that's that's unfortunately the end of our event tonight like i was saying i thank you very much for your presence uh and i would like to thank also our audience i want to thank ali diang dan brown with this fantastic hand movement um yellow red um from the vermont early childhood adversarialians and i would like to also uh thank mega no work uh from china 17 uh she would we would not have been able to make it um uh such great production uh as this one uh i wish you all candidates the best of luck and i also wish all to all of you a good evening thank you