 Welcome, this is January 13th, 2020, this is the Education Committee in the Vermont House of Representatives. And today, we are going to start our listening as to how things are going on in our schools. And I just wanted to start this with acknowledgement that there is a tribe in Africa called the Maasai, whose traditional greeting to each other is Kasarian and Gary. And it means, how are the children? They don't ask each other, how are you, but rather ask about the next generation. And they actually believe that monitoring the well-being of their children is the best way to determine the future health and prosperity of their whole society. And with that in mind, we are very anxious to hear from you. How are things going in this period of COVID? And in there, we will also want to hear, are there some things that we in the legislature can do to help? Are there things that are barriers for you that we might have some influence over? And I would like to start with Superintendent, we're hearing from the superintendents. Now, later we will get an update from the principals and later in the week, we will hear from the teachers and the school board members and the guidance counselors. So I'm really looking forward to this week informing us as to what you're seeing from your perspective. So I'd like to start with David Yance, Superintendent of Mill River Unified Union School District and welcome David Yance. Good morning. Thank you, Representative Webb. I appreciate that. Appreciate being here this morning. I know a few of you personally, I'm looking forward to getting to know the rest of you over the course of this legislative year, and I'm grateful as are my colleagues. So let me start by expressing thanks on behalf of all my colleagues for inviting us to share our perspectives and experiences with you today. My name is Dave Yance. I serve as a superintendent of the Mill River Unified Union School District in Rutland County. I'm also honored to represent my colleagues as the president of the Vermont Superintendents Association. It's an organization that represents and supports more than 50 superintendents and advocates for sound educational policy decisions in order to best serve and meet the needs of students and educators. VSA is very well served by the leadership of Executive Director Jeff Francis and Associate Executive Director Chelsea Myers, who are both with us in this meeting today. We're recognized into five regional groups, Southeast Vermont, Southwest Vermont, Winooski Valley, Northeast Kingdom and Champlain Valley. These groups meet regularly during COVID-19 sometimes multiple times per week to identify regional and statewide needs and provide collegial support. It won't surprise you that during the last 10 months that support has been more important than ever before. And where Vermont Superintendents serve as the statutory CEOs of complex organizations in a state that cherishes local control and decision making, while faced with the need to address challenges, both educational and fiscal on a statewide level. Under normal circumstances, the role of the superintendent is extremely and incredibly challenging. In the pandemic, those challenges are exponentially multiplied. The persistent leadership and wise decision making during the pandemic era has stretched some systems and leaders in ways that may be hard to recover from. Throughout this period, superintendents have collectively filled the gap between statewide directives and policies and the intricacies of local implementation. Superintendents have navigated constantly changing conditions and guidance with grace and skill. They are continually encountered by superintendents include. First, safely operating school systems during the pandemic, while ensuring that as many students as possible have access to in-person instruction and adhering to complex and sometimes restrictive guidelines that limit those opportunities. Second, identifying responding to and exercising influence on policy decisions and directives that might negatively impact school communities. Third, managing school finances and budget development in complicated austere times, despite the challenges that are faced at the local and state level. And fourth, attending as a first priority to the safety, educational and social emotional needs of students and school staff. Much of the success that has occurred in Vermont can be attributed to the integrity and fidelity with which school districts and SUs have met and exceeded expectations. It is my belief that the systems that did the work of merger under Act 46 found themselves far better positioned to navigate the pandemic and its ramifications. Through clear channels created by mergers as related to safety, continuity of learning, managing student and staff needs, and serving as a consistent and predictable support to the broader community. I believe that school operations in COVID-19 in a pre-Act 46 environment would have been significantly more chaotic, fractured, and potentially deadly. I realize that those are strong words. I say them because I mean them. As we continue to survive the pandemic and its effects, the state is logically turning to contemplating a recovery plan. It would be critical that any such planning and expectations around that planning and the products of it be rooted in reality, useful to the organizations doing the work, achievable and reflective of the many complex aspects involved with schools, people, and the global crises that have affected all of our lives. Ultimately, it is my hope and wish that the General Assembly does more than just understand the impressive work that superintendents have collaboratively accomplished with the support of boards, staff, and communities. It is my hope that the General Assembly recognizes that the best expression of support for school districts at this time does not take the form of new ideas and new initiatives. It is the form of time and space. Time and space to lead through the remainder of the pandemic. Time and space to complete implementation of significant legislation already in place. Time and space to take care of kids, staff members, and communities. And finally, time and space to finish a good work started. Vermont is full of people who seek to do the right things for the right reasons, and our schools are but a microcosm of that cultural reality. I wish to thank you for providing us with the opportunity to deliver on our promises to meet and exceed your expectations, and to contribute ably to Vermont to its recovery into its future success. I thank you for letting me share with you this morning. And at this point, I'd like to turn over to my colleague and friend, Jean Collins from Rutland Northeast Supervisor union. I just want to committee members let's hold our questions. Yeah, through all of the superintendents. And just remind superintendents also to just be careful of jargon which you did not use David Jons but just the reminder that some of our members are new to this topic and just be careful of our letters. So, thank you. And superintendent genie Collins welcome back to the Education Committee. Thank you representative web and I'm happy to be here with you all. And I actually have room to spread out my arms as opposed to being squished into a little chair that's unusual. So I am Jean Collins I am the, I'm in my seventh year as superintendent in the Rutland Northeast supervised reunion, which consists of two merge districts Barstow unified and Otter Valley unified. And we serve eight towns in those two districts. Like everyone, we have worked very hard to have a strong reopening plan that keeps staff and students safe and healthy and moving forward. We have raised in opening back in the fall, and it took us about four weeks to get our settled plan into place we started with our K one two kids in five mornings a week, and we offered some childcare to parents around that time, which in hindsight, I probably would not do again because it became very difficult to staff. For me, we have been since October, our elementary students have been in school four days a week with a remote option and about 10% of our elementary students have chosen to stay remote on the classroom, our remote option is that the the student actually streams into the classroom so the teacher has a computer set up in the classroom, and they are teaching remote and in person at the same time we do not have a separate remote Academy, as some of my colleagues do. So Wednesday is a planning day for the teachers and students work on Edmontum learning path, which is both a diagnostic assessment tool but also a tool that provides both remediation and enrichment work for students that's designed exactly for them in kind of a video gaming format so the kids think it's a lot of fun, we're able to get some diagnostic information and provide some skills on Wednesdays that will both remediate and enrich their learning. Otter Valley Middle School and high school are in person two days a week and the students stream in the other two days a week again with Wednesday being a planning full remote day students are given work, but the teachers are planning. And I know that sometimes people have questions why the teachers need a full day to plan, but it is very, very difficult to teach both remotely and in person at the same time it requires a different level of intentionality and so that you you don't want a student really sitting on the computer for seven hours especially in grade two. So you have to know exactly when to have them join you when not etc and and that that is very, very time consuming. So this has been working out well. About 25% of our middle school and high school students choose to stay remote. We have lost a few students to homeschooling with parents, but we may remain connected with the families as we anticipate that they will return in the fall. And we have leveraged federal dollars to purchase a Chromebook for all of our students, and we also provide a hotspot as well to families who need the internet and we're able to cover all but a handful of families that way to access their online learning. And with internet access, this is an area of equity that I feel really should be at the top of the state's plan. I think that this pandemic has really highlighted the inequities throughout the state of access to solid internet, not just for learning but for families in general. We also will not be able to continue to provide hotspots as we move to in person classes, eventually. So there are many lessons learned about coven in particular, you know last spring we pivoted in a matter of 48 hours to be a totally remote system, without having provided computers, and without having any training for the faculty staff or the students to be honest. And we did a great job, but it was not a great job, meaning that we did. Considering the circumstances I feel that we did a wonderful job but we also learned a lot of lessons about the intentionality of planning and and scheduling and timing and so we spent the summer our staff spent the entire summer working on refining our curriculum the essential curriculum, and preparing for a different type of remote learning this fall. We learned that the need for parental engagement makes all the difference in student engagement. When online in particular, we learned that offering lessons remotely as I mentioned requires a different lens on the curriculum with a clear delineation of essential learnings. We learned that kids miss their social time and social emotional learning is more difficult to do remotely. I was at a couple of the schools on the first day that kids return and they were just so excited, even with mass on to see their teachers to see each other. I've had high school kids tell me they only come in on their two days so that they can access their friends in their 20 minute socially distanced lunch. That's hugely important. We also learned that some kids thrive in an online environment, while other kids do not. Just like school, traditional schooling is not a one size fits all. Remote learning has opened up some opportunities for other kids. Hazing harassment and bullying incidents have been reduced significantly as fewer students are in school at once and remote learning is an option. These include thinking about how we can continue to be intentional about the essential learnings and offer more choices and opportunities for students to using technology as we return to in person. And personally, I would like to see a remote option continue in some way as it allows in particular some older students to meet other needs such as jobs or family issues and still be able to take classes. Those are the opportunities that I'd like to identify under COVID. I'd like to take just a minute as well to talk about age 48. I do understand that it passed through the house yesterday and I very much appreciate that and I appreciate some of the pieces that were added after testimony last week. I do want everybody to understand the impact on schools, just as you talk to your colleagues, I guess I can't say in the State House but as you talk to your colleagues, just so that you have an understanding of what it means for your school districts. RNESU, and that is an acronym, has eight towns, which means that there are eight possible dates for voting that can occur. I think that there will be eight different dates. My latest word is that six are going to stick with town meeting five or six and two or three are considering another date, but the potential is eight different dates. Schools have a legislative timeline for our town meeting and that timeline has already begun. And by the time this makes it through the Senate and the governor and becomes official, our timeline can't change because of the legislative pieces of it. So we will be staying with March 2. Our charter calls for our votes to be commingled. So that means that if five or six of my towns vote on March 2 and two or three vote in April or May, I won't know until April or May and whether or not I have an approved budget, which is pretty quick if I need to turn around and go back out, which is concerning to me. As well, the law doesn't actually have an in deadline or the last version I saw. So the towns could choose to vote in October and schools have a deadline of June 1 for an approved budget or else you revert to a formula. I really very much appreciate that the House put in a clause about town supporting the schools in doing votes if if I have towns that are not doing March 2. It means I'm running a special election in those towns. I don't have personnel to do that. Board of civil authority folks. And our towns do, and it's really important that town support the schools if there is a difference in date between towns and schools. So I really appreciate that you heard that and put that into the bill. And with that, I'll just wait until there are questions at the end. Thank you very much, Jeanine Collins very much appreciated Emily nicely from superintendent from Orange East Supervisory Union. Welcome Emily and you have us, you have a budget vote next week don't you. We have a budget vote today. Oh it's today. Hi. So yes, I'm Emily nicely. Thank you so much for having me I serve as the superintendent of schools in Orange East Supervisory Union. And I also serve as the trustee to the VSA for the Northeast Kingdom region of Vermont. Our community serves the towns of that for current top some Bradford Newberry Wells River Groton and ride gate. We have four districts and seven schools, including a regional technical center and two high schools. Our communities have varying levels of economic need. Our country rates are as low as 20% in Fetford and as high as 60% in many of our other buildings. COVID-19 has presented us with both many challenges and many successes. We celebrate our food program for feeding countless families countless meals over the past 10 to 11 months, our ability to offer both remote and in person options to our families. The willingness of our staff to redesign educational delivery models for our students in all new ways. We celebrate our ability to partner with Little Rivers Federal Health Care Center to offer immunization clinics on site health care in our buildings, testing and response to COVID cases, as well as many as well as many mental health supports for students and families with no cost to our schools. We celebrate the dedication of our staff, our students and our families, and their patience and support and perseverance through this all. And I certainly admire and thank them for that. Staffing shortages due to positive cases or quarantines have challenged us, forcing us to shift from in person to fully remote learning at times. We've been challenged by the demands put on school nurses and administrators. We've just had in one school staff working on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to help contact trace positive cases in schools, as well as many weekends over the year. And that's on top of, you know, their usual typical duties and late nights doing other things. And I think in small schools that's been a particular challenge because the bench of folks just isn't as deep as some of our larger buildings. We've had schools that have seen no cases at all, and schools that have seen more than a dozen cases. We've been challenged by the demands of teaching in a pandemic, social distancing masks, administering diligent health and safety protocols. And we've really changed so much of what we do in our schools. I think that that's a really important point to remember as we look towards recovery. But one thing that I think it's that's important for you to know is that we have done it all, and we've smiled through our masks and made our schools as safe as they can be and is welcoming for students as we can make them. But it has been a massive lift. And as we approach month 11 of navigating a pandemic, teachers, parents, staff families are exhausted, plain and simple. And as the vaccine becomes more available, we are now working towards recovery, but it's going to take time for Vermont schools to come back to what I think we all know will be a new normal. As you may remember, one of the districts in my supervisory union oxbow unified union school district is still without an operating budget for this school year. Today, fingers crossed is our fourth vote. It is January, and we have no approved budget to operate the four schools in our care in that district. This causes stress for our faculty stress for our staff who worry about their jobs stress to a school board who has done amazing work to come together and really tough circumstances and they dedicate so much of their time and energy to the good work of trying to make this merger successful. And all of that stress trickles down to students in the classroom and families in our towns who worry about stability. Our first budget vote was scheduled to take place from the floor in April in our traditional town meeting style. After the pandemic we were forced to postpone that first vote. We then held a vote via Australian ballot in June. Not our traditional method and not something that folks were used to this vote failed by 200 votes. The board worked to cut the budget held a second vote in September. And this vote also failed with less than 15% of our voters turning out. The board cut the budget again, and we held a third vote in late November. It failed by only 15 votes with higher turnout than the vote before. And so the board made the decision to present the same budget that failed in November to the voters today, combined with a diligent and effort on the part of many to get folks out today and voting. The Unified Union School District was created by order of the State Board of Education. So it's what is referred to as a forced merger of the towns of Newberry and Bradford. On top of this district being merged. We also had another supervisory district merged into our SU at the same time. So that we've gone through both a district merger and an SU merger. And that has meant a lot of change has come quickly. Most of which has not been voluntary or welcome. There's strong anti merger sentiment. I believe that the SU is too big that local control has been stripped back and placed in the hands of a regional school board administrators and an SU board and people don't like that feeling. In December 29, the town of Newberry held a vote to leave the merged district, the vote to leave surprisingly did not pass. This is a real positive for us and the new district and the new board but there's still a lot of work to do. The lack of budget and the upheaval by caused by COVID. I think made many people reluctant to add more stress stress to the system. And I think that that influenced the votes of many folks in our towns. But despite the anti merger sentiment, the new district has brought increased sharing of resources, greater collaboration among the board and the boards in the SU, greater collaboration among teachers and administrators across the schools, and a popular school choice program amongst families. The boards have moved from not supporting the merger to seeing the advantages of collaboration and shared resources in their work, which has been a very important shift. Lastly, one thing I think that's important to know in terms of the context of all of this is that COVID has really made the work of mergers more challenging. The health regulations that are in place that are very important. We can't invite parents and community into our school buildings. We can't gather in public spaces and work through concerns. We can't hold meetings from our school gymnasiums and cafeterias and sit with our neighbors to work through a budget vote. We can't have coffee hours or pancake breakfast to talk about budgets. And this has increased the feeling that local connections are being lost due to Act 46 mergers. And some of that really is COVID. So Zoom meetings have been really well attended, but it's not the same as sitting with your community in the same space and engaging in civil discourse. For monitors, expect that kind of interaction. We all know that with their schools and their government, and we need time to be able to get past these logistical challenges before we undo the mergers that have already taken place. As you navigate the challenges of the session, I would ask that you just keep those factors in mind. We have already changed the structure of these school districts, the way in which they vote, the manner in which they interact with their community, and the way that they educate their students. And we really need time to work on being connected again in real human ways beyond screens before we focus on shifting our governor's work again. Thank you. Thank you very much, Emily and I wish you well on your, your vote today. We'll be watching. Hello, Superintendent from Addison Central School District. Welcome. Hi, thank you. So, yeah, I would echo a lot of what Emily has said, and I think what I'll share is similar. I want to thank everyone for the opportunity to provide this testimony today to share the work that's happening in Addison Central School District and throughout the state as we navigate the many forces that are coming to bear on education this year. I wanted to start by sharing how grateful the entire field is of the work that our legislators are doing to support Vermont schools, given the myriad of challenges and pressures that we're facing, facing both as a state and as a country. So, thank you so much, all of you for the work that you're doing. And I do wish we were all together right now and not on zoom. I will, I definitely feel that too. Addison Central is comprised of seven towns in Addison County, Bruteport, Cornwall, Middlebury, Ripton, Salisbury, Sherman, Weybridge. Our communities have a strong history of supporting schools. We voted to become a unified district in 2016. And through strong collaboration and systems driven work we've accomplished a lot during this time together. We've accomplished a lot that we couldn't have accomplished as a supervisor union. There are lots of examples of the impact of being a unified district has had for our students. One is becoming an international baccalaureate world district to prepare students to be reflective and principled in a world that is increasingly global. We've made changes to many of our systems we've become more efficient to serve students. I think the biggest impact has been the ability to develop a singular vision and and lean in and and begin to tackle some of the demographic and physical challenges that we're facing today. Financially, and we're just we just adopted our budget on Monday night. The board adopted the budget. We're in a in a somewhat challenging position where the the lines between our our per people costs and the excess spending threshold have crossed. And this year we find our per people cost is $500,000, roughly $500,000 over the excess spending threshold. Prior to unification only one of our eight former districts we were eight districts previously had decided to spend over the excess spending threshold. And as I mentioned that we are currently feeling in our district is balancing our our spending and and and how much we're willing to spend with the tax burden we believe our community can sustain. The ACSD board has been engaged in a facilities master plan over the last four years to work to build a long range vision for spending and determine how we keep all the valuable resources in all of our schools. We're looking at facilities investment in our schools to a lengthy elementary study to consider consolidating resources in fewer schools to increase student access to those resources. The impact of cutting resources every year to stay below the excess spending threshold to avoid double taxation will continue to diminish supports for all students. The tension between keeping town elementary schools and diminishing resources is our greatest challenge. Yesterday there was a vote to secede by two towns in our district ripped in and way bridge. The proposal to secede in ripped in was approved. The proposal to secede in way bridge was rejected. The board has recently postponed a final decision on school consolidation until June to provide more time to engage with our community and work to make a decision to gather that feels most right for our students. I would I would also say that to add to that that it is challenging to do this work by zoom and and not be together and I think one of the one of the challenges of the timing and now being over the threshold is this work has a certain kind of time pressure to it in that you know our predictions for FY 23 are are seeing that that over age and this threshold going up potentially by another million dollars so we we both want to come back together and do this work physically as a community. I'm not not on zoom but Kobe has made that pretty challenging. This work has also brought into high relief the need to designate funds for critical school capital construction needs across the state. As I mentioned we spent four years looking at our our facilities and our infrastructure schools in a CSD our entire need of investment as our others throughout Vermont and we have not had state support for capital investment for many years as local tax burdens continue to rise and believe it's imperative that the General Assembly returns to its study of school construction aid. Capital investment cannot continue to be delayed given the state's aging school infrastructure. Following the example of other states throughout the country a thorough assessment and plan for investment should be made so that local districts are not left with this responsibility alone a responsibility they can't fund and I think we've seen that we saw that last year we saw a number of big bonds in the state. Big and smaller bonds and many of them went down and I think there's a lot of concern among superintendents across the state I've talked to to many who are wondering what their next step is because they don't feel that the their communities can can support a big bond but the need is there so it's a place that I think we're really asking the state to take a lead and and support local schools. COVID-19 has impacted our entire system as it has to others. What struck me most about the impact of the pandemic on our district is both how much has brought us all together and how much we've needed each other as the level of stress and anxiety people feel has become part of our new normal within the pandemic. We've dealt with innumerable challenges over the last year in our community has been incredibly flexible in adapting to the shifting realities of health and safety guidance and the services we're able to provide within this context. Again I appreciate the work the House Education Committee has done for the students of Vermont I look forward to working alongside all of you as we make our way out of the pandemic and continue to continue to build on the strengths of Vermont's education system. Thank you. Thank you very much and Jeff Francis I assume that you are sort of bringing these requests together in a form that we can take a look at some of the requests that are coming forward. Thank you. I figured. And last is Julie Regenbaugh from the Missus Goy Valley School District so welcome Julie thank you so much for joining us today. Well good morning and thank you so much for having all of us here to speak with you to this morning. As you said I'm Julie Regenbaugh and I'm currently in my third year serving as superintendent of the Missus Goy Valley School District or MVSD. We were one of the last like Emily one of the last round of school districts that was merged through state Board of Ed directive, and we came to a new existence just July 1 of 2019. It's kind of unpopular here as well, though we have had a very smooth and successful first year and a half. Our district comprises the towns of Franklin Highgate and Swanton. We have approximately 1800 students and they attend three pre K through six grade schools, and then attend seven through 12th grade at MVU middle and high school. Again, I want to thank you for the opportunity to share the experiences of our teachers, administrators and in our community members through this pandemic. I have to say last March, the move to close schools and educate students remotely was just a huge challenge. However, I have to credit our, our community our teachers everyone it has gone so well and people have had such a good spirit about facing this challenge together. A great example of this is last spring, our food service. And how are we going to feed our families was a problem that we solve together our food service team, our bus companies are teachers they just worked as a well oiled machine. And working out of our high school, we delivered 186,675 meals to students between March 23 and June 15. And that is just a Herculean task. And it couldn't have been done without a huge support from our teachers and the teachers union, and the just sort of we're all in this together all hands on deck spirit. And that has really helped us through this whole pandemic. And now we've moved away from delivering meals once summer began. And we began transporting students at the opening of school. And so families had to come and pick up meals. What we found is that was harder. So we actually moved to creating meal boxes, and those boxes can be picked up a day a week. Instead of prepared meals. There are ingredients and recipes for families to make meals together at their home. And that has been very popular, and has really increased our participation. I mentioned these numbers and this emphasis on feeding our families because we just know that in Franklin County, as well as other parts of Vermont, there are just so many families for whom food insecurity is a daily issue. And we appreciate the focus from the state and the federal government on prioritized feeding our feeding our students. Currently on our return to school. We have a combination of in person and hybrid models going on in our district. Franklin central school and high gate elementary school students are learning in person five days a week in grades K through six. Our Swanton elementary students are learning in person five days a week in K five and hybrid in sixth grade. We have some staffing issues and it's a larger school with larger numbers of students it's hard to fit them all in the space. Unfortunately, the sixth grade there is still hybrid, our middle and high school students and seven through 12 are all hybrid they're educated in person two days a week and remotely three days a week. I have to say we've also partnered with our Swanton rec department, they are a childcare hub for us, and they are serving remote students in six through eighth grade, and in all three of our towns who want to join. There are also students who have chosen 100% remote option that are just missing that social connection, or they feel that, you know, somebody else besides their families need to help them and support them through their, their work. So that partnership has worked really well. As I mentioned, we did offer 100% remote option for those who really wanted to learn remotely. So instead of send their child to school. We had 160 students who chose that, and we partnered with Vermont, BTVLC Vermont virtual learning collaborative or cooperative. That's definitely cause some challenges and part of our staffing challenges in schools like Swanton are directly related to the number of students who wanted to go remotely and we had to give teachers to that program but overall really we, it was a tough piece of work to do both things, but we were able to balance it well. And I think that most students got the model that they needed for their students and their family and so to us that's the most important piece. Opportunities or really just lucky serendipitous pieces of the work we were doing before the pandemic hit, and it helped us sustain through so far this pandemic pandemic is the work we were doing in social emotional learning in our district. And as kids were coming back to school, we were going to have to focus pretty heavily on the social emotional learning needs of our students. And we were lucky because we spent last school year, developing a set of social emotional learning competencies with a real multi disciplinary team of teachers and staff, and the support of the collaborative for social emotional learning or castle. The work continued even after the closure of schools last March, and the competencies gave teachers the tools they needed to embed evidence based practices to support students emotional well being. Now, it was lucky because we needed it so much with the pandemic but the work had already started, and it was amazing the commitment that our teachers had to finishing that work. What we know about SEL and social emotional learning is that a student's ability to regulate themselves and attend to the feelings of others is a prerequisite for success in school and in life. And this year being so extraordinary it was all the more urgent that we treat students SEL, social emotional functioning through a learning lens rather than a deficit or disciplinary lens. The urgency of the COVID pandemic, coupled with the availability of this new district curriculum created an opportunity really for us to dive in and really change the culture and attitudes about students who struggle with their emotional well being. So that was one of the positive outcomes for us. This challenge, though, just by far that we face in this pandemic is the unequal access that students have had to high quality instruction, despite honestly the very best efforts of our talented educators. Teachers have put into place some really very rigorous learning experiences for students, yet in the end we have more children who are not attending or are attending infrequently. We have students with special needs for learning remotely is just ineffective. Regardless of the good plans put in place, we know that the long term effects of COVID-19 could be significant, particularly for children who already experienced an achievement gap. This leads me really to discuss our current and future hopes for the delivery of special education. As a former special ed director and member of the special ed advisory panel. I really believe what we do now in response to this learning crisis could either marginalize large groups of students, or it could redesign a more responsive and effective system for struggling learners. We're unique in how we have defined what special education is. The delivery system has been built on a definition of special ed that requires services above and beyond those offered in the regular education system of supports. This has created a model that requires children's needs to be diagnosed and labeled before they can get more. It has not only pathologized the learning differences of students created a culture of more is better, and it's also resulted in marginalizing students from their classroom teachers. Some of those practices have been really obvious. The overuse of pull out services, the over reliance on para educators, for example. But other practices have been more subtle, but are still very damaging to student outcomes, both individual outcomes and systemically, the outcomes for our students. When we define special as something other than the classroom teacher, we defer responsibility to someone else for that student's success. The district management group highlighted this in their report, where most classroom teachers reported feeling under qualified to teach struggling readers. The result is that Vermont lags in closing the achievement gap, and we over identify some groups of students as needing special education. Act 173 in part was designed to break this system. The change in who funds services can change who delivers them. The proposed special education rules reflects a change in the definition of special education that will remove that above and beyond language, and should allow us to put the best teacher in front of the neediest student. Hopefully we can do that with less labeling of students. In 173 to be successful, we need to ensure that we redesign our systems in a way that optimizes staff and their experience. You put that best reading teacher in front of the neediest student, rather than a special educator who just got out of school. We retrain, pardon me, we retrain and reshape the culture that our general education system and teachers have so that they understand their central role in reaching students with learning and social emotional challenges. Here's a mindset that really needs to change. We need to train our teachers in the instructional practices they need to be the experts in teaching literacy and mathematics to students who struggle to learn. We have to ensure that the regulations in the interpretation of those regulations by the agency of education, support a model that keeps high quality instruction as close to the classroom as possible. Rather than create layers that remove students and frankly only serve to sift and sort children, often along socioeconomic and cultural lines. We have an opportunity to truly use Act 173 in a revolutionary way that will help close learning gaps. It is my hope that the urgency of the pandemic recovery will force systems to redesign how we educate struggling learners. If so, Vermont can have a system that focuses more on instruction than it does on identification. And that will be good for all of our children. Thank you again for the opportunity to share not only our experiences during the COVID time but also our worries and hopes for public education during this recovery period. Thank you. Thank you very much. I want to offer some time for committee members that have questions of the superintendent's. We have until we have about another half an hour. A little less than a half an hour and then we'll take a 15 minute break and have the principles come in. But this is it's very helpful and some of the things that I'm hearing you talk about our already bills were expecting into the committee, as well as things that we may be taking up anyway. Representative Conlon. Good morning everybody and thanks for some very powerful testimony. There's a lot of sort of big picture thoughts that you shared with us. I actually have a couple of kind of specific questions. Dave ounce talked about the need to give schools time and space, no new initiatives. I guess I'd ask you and then everybody else can sort of nod their heads. Yes or no. But that is what one of the ways we could give you some time and space would be to pause the implementation of E finance. That is a fantastic question representative Conlon. I think pausing the implementation would be a why strategic move and in the field. I'm very interested in reviewing the product in and of itself. The we do experience challenges with the finance being able to meet the needs of school districts and even meet the needs of the auditors who are, you know, looking to analyze our spending and make sure that we're following all the rules that we need to so you finance does need to be looked at and a pause would be a great first move. And I'm just curious to know how anybody else can jump in on this obviously. There was a lot of use of the Vermont Cooperative Learning Collaborative I'm not sure if that's the right name for it. I'm just curious to know how that worked and what you see as its future. Once we get beyond the pandemic. I we in my district don't have any experience with VTVLC. Do any of my colleagues, anyone have. We do not beyond what existed before the pandemic we did not sign on during the pandemic so I don't really have a response to that. Billy. Yeah, we chose to go with VTVLC rather than develop our own program. And there's pros and cons with it. I mean, they had to scale up an unprecedented number of students enrolling. And it's like running a school that you don't have control over so it's a little bit of a challenge there. I think the biggest challenge was the amount of work that our administrative team had to be involved in meetings and problem solving. And that continues. That was unknown to us, but our many of our students are very well served by it, particularly older students it gives them some options and there, there's aspects of it that maybe we'll be keeping for some of our students. So they can have some, some offerings that we don't have in our high school. It's tough though was younger family families of younger children who were afraid of COVID and didn't want in person learning, but chose this and then realized it wasn't really a fit for a second grader. As the teachers doing a fabulous job but it's just different teaching a second grader than a ninth grader remotely. And some of those students wanted to come back, but we had to give our teachers away. So every 20 students that enrolled we needed to give a teacher. So that meant redesigning our classrooms and then we had space, you know, requirements that only allowed so many children per classroom. So that really became a real burden. And as children wanted to come back. Honestly, it's public school you can't say we're, we're full, but that was a pressure that we had to work through and we need to be pretty darn creative to make things happen for kids, but unique circumstances. Thank you for just put on our list, the Vermont virtual learning cooperative for us to have a moment to chat about at some point. Peter Burroughs, and then and then Jeannie Collins. Yeah, I was going to add, you know, we've we've started to try to map out our recovery plan in a CSD to look at, you know, kind of thinking through this year and and expecting that next year, we won't necessarily be back to quote unquote normal but you know, trying to take some of what we've learned from the pandemic and start to structure how we're going to return and and I think virtual learning is one of the things that we were talking about wondering. You know, how does that fit in to, you know, let's assume everyone's vaccinated work back to normal. How does virtual learning fit in based on what we've learned thus far so I think I guess I would say that I think a lot of districts are going to be, you know, over the next six months to a year and looking at that and considering how does virtual learning fit within in a program from the way it did previously, how does it fit in based on what we've learned, both with VTV you'll see and as Jeannie mentioned, a number of folks have their own remote academies or they have virtual learning connected to a classroom that's work that I think the field needs to do and goes alongside the other ahas that we've experienced over the last 10 months in and seeing that some of what we were doing before wasn't working and this is an opportunity to start to shift things. Thank you. Representative Brown. Thank you. Miss nicely from the Orange East supervisory union had mentioned that her school district had been on partnering with local health and mental health providers around supporting families and I was just curious if she could say a little bit more about what what that partnership looked like. Yes, so we partner with Little Rivers, which is a federal health care center. Pre COVID. So, maybe four, five or six years ago we began this down the road of this partnership. And we actually went through the process with a lot of guidance from Little Rivers who have been wonderful partners to to go through the process of making our school buildings into federal health care center sites so we went through the federal process to get that approved in doing that that means that we can have staff from Little Rivers working in our school buildings at no cost to us other than giving them an office space or a spot to sit. And they're able to work with students that does mean that they need to enroll them as patients. But there is flexibility in the rules that you know if they have a couple of patients let's say in a in a social skills group. They can serve eight students who don't necessarily have to be their patients. And we started small in one school and we've expanded over the course of the past couple of years. And I think because that foundation was already there the work became began in mental health support and behavioral support but because those foundations were already there. With the COVID hit we look to them, quite frankly for their medical expertise and began to expand what other pieces we could do in our schools. And so we now have one of our school buildings has a clinic and a physician is is there. We're in the planning stages now for once they have vaccines how we're going to distribute those and use the schools to do that. For lack of a better word a run of cases and one of the school building they came I called and they came in and tested anyone for COVID who wanted to be tested so it's been really wonderful. And it's expanded services to our families and hasn't added to our per pupil costs and has helped them bring in revenue and rural health care. I'm Jean Collins you're going to speak on about virtual learning cooperative. Thank you I just wanted to reinforce a point I made earlier that for remote learning to continue, whether it's VTV LC expanded or whether it's districts providing their own, there needs to be internet access I neglected to say that in the spring. I think that 5% of my families and 10% of my staff could not access the internet from their home, and they sat in our school parking lots to access it. With the hotspots we've improved that, but if we can improve that with hotspots I think that the state of Vermont can improve that for everybody. So you can't have one without the other. Here we actually heard from teachers parked outside of their school districts trying to deliver, you know, services from their cars. So, I mean I've lost my hands. Let's see, it would represent James and that representative Austin represent James is your question get answered. I did thank you I was also curious about the community school aspect of integrating health and mental health. So thank you. Interesting conversation representative Austin, then representative Coupoli. Hi, thank you and I just want to extend my gratitude not only not only as a legislator but as a citizen. I think you made it look too easy. In terms of how you pivoted and I think if you're in education, you realize how difficult that wasn't complicated so I really appreciate the work you did. I have two questions. One is about something Julie mentioned in terms of the learning and I'm wondering, I'll ask my two questions and maybe Jeff can answer at some point but I'm wondering if you are thinking at all with funding. If we could use some of the CRF funding or that we're getting if you have considered summer, using summer as a time, possibly for remedial work for the students that have really fell behind in their skills and knowledge. So that's one question. And the other question is I think one thing that COVID did was put a huge spotlight on the role that schools play in terms of childcare and the economy and making it possible for working kids to work. And I think that's a huge shift I think people really never thought about that role of schools that without children going to schools people couldn't go to work and the economy couldn't grow and I can't grow and I just was wondering, you know at some point maybe I don't know because that's that's an interesting subject, but if we could look at that in terms of a shift on how the public sees public schools in their roles of feeding kids and taking care of kids so parents can go to work as well as teaching, you know, skills and knowledge. So one on one on summer and you're on the role of school of childcare. Thank you. Gina Collins you had a response. Summer we are thinking about that we haven't fully decided because to be honest our staff also needs a break. They worked through last summer so we haven't figured that out completely yet but we are looking at credit recovery and and summer media learning time. But the other point I really wanted to speak to. Yes, I think that the spotlight really was shown on the schools and I think even so it's only part of a spotlight. So the schools do provide childcare, we provide after school programs. I think it was Julia or Emily spoke about the food programs I didn't mention that but we were feeding, we are giving out 750 meals a day in the spring. We're still doing about 300 meals a day that we're delivering home when kids are not actually in school. So we provide food, we provide mental health, as Julie explained and, or again, I forget who explained the integrated services with health. And we I also had a health care center in my previous district. We're providing health care services through nursing we're providing mental health services, we're providing food services childcare services, and, and teaching so if there's a way that we could spotlight all of that I, I would be all for it. Anybody else on that one. David young. Yes, thank you. On the second question kind of the how do we, how do we serve the community better. There was a piece this morning I'm not an expert on this but I read a piece just before this meeting in VT digger by Bill Schubert and he was talking about reimagining community schools. And he's talked about in his language, you know, funneling money upstream, meaning down to the younger age children, and seeing the benefits of that long term while also maintaining the importance and the value of especially small elementary schools in smaller communities. My initial reaction to that this is off the cuff so please bear with me. My initial reaction to that was, Hey, as a superintendent, I can speak for my colleagues and say we love dreaming about those types of things we love thinking and creating solutions but first how do we fund that and how do we fund that in a way that doesn't require more money than we currently pull from taxpayers to fund that would be an interesting challenge to face then how do you staff that in a in a state where we do struggle with some of the infrastructure dynamics that modern society expects in terms of people having access to work and childcare etc so how do you get the folks to occupy the roles and then how long would it take to see the positive impacts of that. How long do you view an investment at one level that has a trickle down dynamic. How long does it take to see the results that you're looking for and then that that's just bouncing around my head as we're speaking here this morning so exciting opportunities maybe necessary opportunities but things that will require money and time in order to find success. Thanks for asking that. All of schools has changed a bit since most of us were students. Let's see, I think it was representative Cookeley and then representative Harrison. You. I'm you. Thank you madam chair and welcome superintendents. Nice to see Rotman County represented. Julie I have some concerns you have mentioned special education issues or whatever I my concern is, where are we going to find special education teachers. When you have made a comment about putting a first year graduate or someone in in a classroom with special needs children or children that do need those supports. How are you dealing with that up there in terms of recruiting. Oh boy. This is a very good question. In my former job that was a big part of what I did is trying to attract teachers up to Franklin County. And when we get new teachers from graduate programs in in Vermont. They are trained as generalists right so they learn a little bit about special ed they learn about the law they learn about the process. They don't have they're not master teachers. So, they know how to find out about a student and their disability and they're not trained to be expert reading specialist expert math teachers. So, we can expect them to be everything by the time if you have a good special educator, and you train them and you keep them and you give them those opportunities. Then wow, you've got something powerful and they work collaboratively with their veteran teachers around them. Franklin County LaMoyle County, you know, more rural parts of the state. We train those folks, and then they go somewhere else often with their good experience. And that's a challenge that we have and then that can affect your whole program, and how, how sustainable how you know if I'm a science teacher at a high school and I have a new special ed person every year or two, I don't build my own skills. I don't build those, you know, so it's a big challenge. It's not so much that we aren't getting folks trained and out there in the field, we are, but they don't necessarily stay. And they don't come with the expertise that a classroom teacher or content area teacher has who's been teaching, reading or English language arts for 15 years. Those are the teachers we need to train because they're not going anywhere. Right. And so we really need to focus on the partnership between a special educator that may be newer. And the classroom teacher who has a lot of expertise in how to teach, and they should learn from one another. Thank you. Yeah, I was going to ask if there's anyone else who would like to join in on that particular conversation. Peter. Yeah, I mean, the way I think kind of connected to this in thinking about recovery and, and special ed and, and Act 173 I think we find ourselves with COVID-19 in an unusual situation where due to the learning gaps that are forming or that have been formed over the last 10 months I just read a research article where where someone actually quantitatively looked at where the learning loss has happened over the last 10 months and it was pretty significant and is impacting our students living in poverty much more significantly than than others from wealthier families so that's a huge concern and historically, those challenges tend to fall to special ed as Julie mentioned, it tends to leave the general ed classroom and moves over to special ed and then it becomes challenging for us to have a comprehensive approach which is I think what acts 173 is about so I, I think, you know as we plan for coming out of COVID-19 and supporting all students and, and really leaning into those learning gaps. We can't, it can't be just special ed that's carrying this it's going to have to be our entire teaching and learning framework that pivots in a way that it never has had to before, because we find ourselves in a place we've never been. Thank you. If it gives folks some, some hope, I do believe we are going to be looking at the DMG report from from act 173, looking at relating that to learning loss that is brought to us by COVID, and perhaps the ability to use some federal funds to help with that implementation. So that's a current conversation that that some of us have been having as a way to actually move that forward. Representative arson we've got, we've got about five more minutes I'll let it go 10 but I want to make sure we've got a 10 minute break in between. So representative arson please. Thank you very much. I have a question to all the superintendents are at our local level. We're seeing the school budgets, trending. They're still passing but they're trending to a point where we're concerned they're not going to pass. And what my question is whether or not we're seeing that trend across the state. And another area that our local board has shown concern with is, we have a vote at the SU level from our representative, but if the local budget fails. The SU budget has been fixed and doesn't, you can't really touch it. Somebody could address that. David young, please. I have a question representative arson thanks for asking it. Yes, so this is year seven for me and my role and I would suggest that over the previous six years I've seen those budget votes, getting closer and closer on the yeses and knows and I think that's a trend that many of my colleagues are seeing statewide. I will say as we've been operational as a unified district. This is our fourth or fifth year now it's been so long I've lost track but 2016 of July of 2016 we went live. And I do not miss the scenario where we were preparing an SU budget that was in fact a fixed number that the community had very little control over, and that it was the local school based budget that was the variable that the town voted on so I suspect that's still the case. My colleague genie is is still in an SU context and might have some some feedback on that as well. I also see the trend getting tighter and tighter. I also think that this year is going to blow us all out of the water because there are so many other factors that we're facing as despite keeping schools open people are not able to work and have money for taxes and yet it does cost to run the schools and you know I think this particular year isn't necessarily part of that trend this particular year is going to reflect the pandemic. There is, there is talking in my outer valley community about wanting to know the cost of running each school and still having difficulty understanding that they're running an entire district, and you can't really tease out the cost of a school by school anymore because your staffing is district staff not not school by school staff you can to some extent but it's hard to explain how that plays out. Other people show up at budget discussions only if their particular town school is affected in it. And, and, and yet at the same time being able to budget for an entire district allows me to retain staff that I otherwise would have let go of as we were right sizing and letting go of a number of staff. So I would like to therefore retain my investment in that staff and save money for the district but it's, we're still very much in a transition communication phase with that. It's, I don't have a direct answer that's just some information for you. Thank you this has been very helpful. I'm wondering if Jeff Francis or Chelsea Myers from the, from the superintendent's association have any, oh, there's also Emily I want to just maybe get Emily first and then Chelsea Chelsea and Jeff if you have something to close with we'd appreciate it. Yeah just very briefly, I, I can comment that certainly has been a factor in our budget struggle in terms of being able to pass the budget that we're still waiting on. And I know that, you know, if those budgets go down earlier in the season, we have certainly returned to the table at the issue board and made adjustments. We continue to try to operate under a spending freeze at the issue except for COVID essentials just to keep costs as low as possible. Again, you know, one of the challenges in our issue is that we have some budgets that are voted on at town meeting, and we have some budgets that are voted on in May. If a budget fails in May, we've already contracted a fair number of that issue staff for the next year so it makes any adjustments harder. If those budgets go down at town meeting day, there's certainly more flexibility for that issue board to return to the table and make adjustments if they need to but we certainly set our issue budget earlier in the game than that. So people have those, those numbers for their votes but it is it has been a factor for us. And one of the benefits, again, of, of supervisory districts instead of supervisory unions obviously is that it's one budget and the vote or two budget and the voters do have a say in those district level things in a more active way than they do with an issue. At some point, not now I would be interested in your thoughts on why some budgets are voted so late in the year. And if there is something that that is something that should be considered when you have access to, to your, to your, to your town support. Jeff and Chelsea. Thank you chair chair web on the question of s hues versus STs. One of the underlying principles of act four six was more equitable opportunity for kids and better utilization resources. So, despite the fact that we have some supervisory unions, continuing to exist in Vermont, and that was thought through. It is not the, it's, you know, I'll tell you from my observation and superintendents will attest that as to use or not a more efficient delivery structure than single school districts. And that's something that the General Assembly should keep in mind as you consider anything more relative to act four six with regard to the testimony this morning. I'm pleased with the group that we reached out to because you got a very very good representative sample of what's going on. I think I speak for Chelsea when I say that we're proud of our association with these folks. We're eager to hear testimony from the other participants in the education delivery system. And throughout your journey through the rest of this session, Chelsea and I are going to be available to you to support and inform the work of your committee. I'm going to bring witnesses to you on practically any area of interest to echo Dave ounces opening comments, space and time in terms of the pandemic recovery are very important. There are very, very big issues like Internet connectivity and broadband learning recovery and capital construction aid for schools that we want to see the General Assembly pursue in earnest. We're hoping that there are no new initiatives per se of a programmatic nature. I think that there'll be time for that in the future. There are a lot of lessons learned coming out of COVID and most of them reiterate the, the, the, the legislation that was introduced in the years preceding introduced and approved in the years preceding COVID act 173 act 46. So we are in we're on the right course. And I think we need to get back on course. But it's a pleasure to be with you today and, and, and I'm happy to be here with these. I'm wondering if Chelsea has anything she wants to add she's a great asset to our association and is familiar and will be familiar to the committee as well. Thank you Chelsea about one minute. Just quickly, Chelsea Myers BSA associate executive director. Something that was not raised was that superintendents are also contending with efforts to increase anti racism in schools and promote equity and also contending with a lot of civic unrest. And I think that on top of this layered pandemic, they are contending with each day and some communities are more ready to tackle that than others and it's a topic that you might want to consider listening to practitioners about in the future. Thank you I do expect some bells and I'm also I'm getting questions about media literacy after seeing the storming of the Capitol, where people are getting information. I want to give committee members 10 minute break. I thank you so much. We will be keeping Jeff and Chelsea, a prize and it connected to our committee. So if you can, you can sort of work through them. That makes things a little bit easier for us. So with that, what I want to do is say we're going to be offline you're more than welcome to participate or to watch I guess on YouTube, our conversation with this with the principles. And so with that, I will go offline for now. And I will see you in 10 minutes.