 Welcome. I'm Diane Meyerhoff, host for TownMeeting TV's Winooski School Board Candidate Forum, part of our ongoing TownMeeting 2021 coverage. The show is being aired live on TownMeeting TV and streamed live on our YouTube channel. We welcome your comments and questions. If you're watching this program live, please join the conversation at 862-3966. I am joined by incumbent school board member Alex Yen. Alex, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Well, thank you for having me, Diane. It's always a pleasure to be on the show with you. Well, thank you. And you are running unopposed for a two-year school board seat, yes? Yes, I am. And hopefully, the voters will still like me. Let's hope so. So, Alex, tell me, we've had a couple of these programs before. We've talked about the budget. We've talked about a variety of things. What do you want voters to know this TownMeeting Day? Well, first, I, you know, it behooved me to first, I didn't really need to, like, thank the superintendent and his administration, his staff and faculty for having to deal with, you know, the pandemic. I think we're in a unique situation in our school district where not having schools sometimes not really feasible. And it was almost as if there was a lose-lose situation. What are you choose? It was going to be difficult. And I wanted to honor those folks who did this, who work in our school district. And I really think about the phrase true heroes don't necessarily always wear capes. They know. And I know that I don't know, we can always make the decisions to make them happy, but note that I'm hoping words mean something at the very least. Sure. Yeah. With that said, you know, like, what are we excited for? I'm telling you, I'm just like having been on the school board for four years and seeing what we're doing, like, we have something that we can be proud of in our school district. Like, and I always say that like, the work that Sean's leadership has done in terms of like changing the curriculum and changing the pedagogy, I can see the results now. Like, I think when we did the school budget, I said, like, you know, we have like three presidential scholars out of our district. And truly, like, I hear stories where like, our students are going like, you know, so I did a presentation in DC. I'm like, okay, so like, how many people I did it for over a thousand people with like, you know, and they take it all so nonchalantly. I'm like, you know, when I was 17, like, I would be nervous doing public television. And I don't get to see the people. Right. And it's amazing to see our students grow facilitating, you know, anti racism school and teaching people like me, like how to speak up and all that. And I'll relate that to more on that thing. And we're also doing this as we're building a new school building, you know, but it's going well. And once again, I really hope that the voters can see that we're proactive. Yes, we got the bond, $57.8 million. Right. But we didn't just sit on that and go like, we'll just expect the pay. You should see the work that we do and making sure that we're on time on budget. And because we wanted to challenge because we knew we were so good, we threw a pandemic in the middle of it. I know I don't need to make light of this, but like, we knew that it was important to keep on pushing through because it's almost unethical to work in a school where teachers were working in closets or janitorial spaces, or there's this fear that the boiler might not last another year. Right. And then that we would have to eBay the parts because we had to wait for other schools to have their boilers decommissioned. Right. And so like building the school, so we're building the school in this for these students. And, and I think I told you like, and one of the things that I mentioned about our extraordinary students, I think I laugh at it because I'm like, these students' names are going to appear on our Wikipedia page for Windows. Like as noble people who live because I see greatness. I think I can see future governors of Vermont. I can see future researchers in science, maybe discovering the next cure for cancer or things like that. I can see leaders in social work. I can see that. But I also don't, I also know that we're often talking about the, we treat these as exceptions and not the norm. And I do believe that we're building a budget and building a community that these aren't going to be Disney movies. This is going to be the norm for all the kids. That's what it means to live in Winooski. That's what it means to create an equitable education. And that's what gets me excited about living in a district. And this is weird for me because I don't have kids in the district. I'm not even married. So the odds of me having children right now isn't going to be for sure. But I know that we're building the future. I mean, we're doing it for the president and we're doing the future. And I think one of the hardest parts you ask about like, how do we deal with the budget? Yes, I wish we had more money to do more things. But I also made a promise that we wouldn't raise the budget so high because I can afford like the higher taxes and I kind of do want to at times. But I also want to make sure that I'm building a school in a community for the current community now. I worry about gentrification. This is for the, these are for all the residents that live in Winooski now. And that's that balance of trying to do things with it. And that's a tricky balance. It is. I mean, as you well know, we presented a budget increase of 2.7%. And we're talking about a 6.7% increase in taxes. And now please note, folks, before you all get scared, there's all these like caveats on how to pay taxes and where you go. Please watch the budget presentation to learn what we mean by that or pay attention to the city. But a lot of this is also, and this is where we're kind of changing in terms of like what our board is doing is we're also going on the advocacy rate, going to the Senate to talk and do Tesla to build coalitions around the city because it makes no sense. How does a district that works so hard to keep their budget low and sustain services, but the tax increase is much larger than the increase of the budget. And some of this is actually related to how our education funding formula is construed and how we count students. You said much of this is very outdated. We were talking about this earlier. Yes. It's a funding formula that started in the 1990s that had no data to like actually support the weights. It was going on political kind of like maneuverings and all that. But it's funny, it's the legislators two years ago realized that there was something off. And so they conducted a study. And the study with all the numbers, like right now our weighting study says we have about a thousand students, a little under 980-ish stuff. But this new weighting study actually says we actually have 1600. Wow. The 1600 would actually, if we could actually have the taxes that is distributed so that we can be in an equitable fashion, we would have more money to spend with the same level of taxes that we're paying. Wow. And that's where we're, that's where I'm working with with the permission of the board to work in coalitions with like Burlington and other rural districts to combine and fight and get the legislators to take on a bill that will get them to take on the recommendations of a data study on weighting. And that's important for me. And I tell a lot of people that even though I'm going there as a Winooski hike, I'm really speaking more for all of Vermont because this is important for me that we give equitable education for all students in the state and that it's weird because I don't think we've been actually properly giving the voice for those who can't don't have the time to voice their concerns. That's what I wondered about. When you talk about the towns that particularly are disadvantaged in terms of the formula weights, is it tend to be the towns that are not as wealthy? It's not as wealthy, rural, large, so it's generational poverty that happens. And I tell folks, if these other towns wanted our students, they would have moved there, but you purposely made housing costs so high that they can't move there. And then I also know for a fact that when we were trying to merge certain school districts, school districts in Vermont, it's because they saw that they would have to handle these issues. So why not just redistribute the funds that where our school district is proven that we're doing well? This was back to the beginning, the whole Brigham decision years ago. Exactly. I mean, it's just sort of keep cycling through, it feels like. Totally. And I'm not saying that we should set the weights and just forget about them for 20 years. I'm an engineer, right? You build like five-year cycles, right? And so that this doesn't happen in the grand scheme. And I know that it's hard work. We all know it's hard work. This is never easy. No. And there's no magic bullet answer, because it would have been done, right? Well, hopefully it would have been done, but hopefully now that it's been highlighted, we will be done. But I also tell folks, you know, as Vermonters, right, we're not afraid of hard work. We roll up our sleeves. Like once we know it's inequitable, we go work on it, right? And that's what I'm trying to push is to understand that this is an equity issue. And people go like, you know, why care about this as an education? I'm going like, because this is about the future of a democracy. A democracy is dependent on a educated populace, right? So we take away for a certain group, then we're threatening the own fundamental values of what it means to be a Vermonter. So that's the work that, you know, like, it's tiring, not going to lie, there it is. Why am I doing this? But it's important work. And I'm glad that I get to speak up. And it makes it easier, because this is the lesson that I learned from our students as they did the anti-regal. So it shows that I can still learn. When we did the social justice and kind of work, and it's not easy from the mirror's held against your face, one of the things that like really picked my peak about it was that the students said it was bad enough that we faced the racism when we were in our sporting fields from these other towns and stuff. But what made it worse was when no one in our town districts stood up or arrested. So this is the lesson. And this is my thank you to the Winooski students to give me the strength and the power as I speak for them is to recognize that the inequities are already proven, the recommendations, the data. It's up to us, the adults, the school board members, to get the community to speak up for the inequities. It's definitely for the people who can't speak up. How can you not want to support a school district that wants to be there? How do you not want to be a part of a board that has that like face limit? It's not always sexy work in terms of equity. Sometimes you want to deal more with the culture and the protests and all that. But these are the underlying things that I think I do to help face that like structural racism, structural inequality that are built into our systems. And there's no doubt that, you know, I'm just thankful that, well, I hope to be thankful after my lecture. They let me continue to do that to help me that attitude, you know. Yeah. Well, it sounds like really you're talking about, you know, institutional change from within. And there's always this debate about change to come from within or from the outside. And perhaps both. I think it's both, but it does. And I think it has to be both. It isn't one or the other. It has to come from both. And it has to be this mutual respect for both. Yes. Yes. Which can be hard to come by. It is. It totally is and stuff. So that's what I see as conflicts, but I also see that as good energy. Because it means it's to some level that people care. Right. Good point. You know, I know, like, we were only here for 15 minutes and I got two minutes. But, you know, I always appreciate these conversations. And, you know, I can talk about other things and stuff about the school, but anything else that like. Are there things you want voters to know when they go to the polls on Tuesday? Oh, you know, school budget, other issues as the school budget, but have faith that have faith that this is a school board that works closely with the superintendent to be proactive in decision making proactive that allows us to save money. Like I said, 57.8 million, but we didn't stop working on the bond. We started like a foundation, the hearts of Winooski to get donations to help pay down that debt. To get the USDA loan to decrease the interest rate that we have for $10 million over the lifespan of that. Like there's a lot of things that I'm really proud of that like it isn't just like all this fun thing on the equity and all this. You call that fun. But it's also paying attention that I hold true of building a school district and that it's the heart of our community for the people that live here now and so that they can continue to be like the lifelong Winooskiites and the show a town that cares. You know, you're working on that Wikipedia page. I can tell. Definitely. Like I said, I'm hoping that I see like five students from like the last three classes that Wikipedia notable loans like so and so. You know, and I see it. I really do. And it's not magic. I wish I could take credit for this, but really, I just show up and like listen, right? Like it's creating an environment for it. And that's what makes it special. And so I hope the voters remember that like we are thinking long term and not being reactive because it's when we do reactive stuff. That's when it costs much more money. You may think you're saving more, but truthfully, in the long run, you're always paying more. And the example that I always give is the fact that when we didn't take care of our water pipes and we wanted to be unexpectedly one winter had decided that we were going to build a hockey rink in the middle of our parking lot, right? That is not what we wanted to do. So tell me, when is that school? What is the new building supposed to open up? Hopefully not this fall, but the following fall, fiscal year, end of 2022, started 2022 school season and stuff. So when you think about that, like... That's not that far off. Not that far up. And you're going like, what were we thinking with the pandemic? Would you be having in school learning, right? Yes, we have. And we're going to start shifting stuff around. I mean, I got to admit, the next scary part is really dealing with... It's easy to build a new part. The hard part now is digging into and hope that there's nothing wrong when you go inside the walls of an existing building that we're running. Right, right. Been there, yeah. Anybody who's watched the AGTV show knows that that's always scary, right? And that's why we're asking for you to pay attention to that, even though it may seem we have a little bit of a larger general fun, rainy day fun. We're just protecting it to make sure that we anticipate, you know, hopefully we've anticipated it and we don't have to use it. And then what we'll do probably with that money is pay it, pay down more of the debt. So instead of borrowing 57.8, we need to borrow a little bit less, which will save you more money on the long term. So problem. All right. Well, I think we have to wrap up. I mean, I know we can go on all night. Sorry. No, I know. It's always like once again, thank you to the Winooski residents for letting me speak. It is always a pleasure to always have a conversation with you. So thanks for joining us. It's great. It's great. And we should remind everybody out there to make sure they vote, right, either by early ballot or in person on Tuesday, March 2 next week. And of course, watch TellMeetingTV's live results show at seven o'clock. And I heard a potential Winooski, notable Winooskiite is going to be on it. Seth Leonard. That's true. Seth Leonard is going to be joining us. Yes. Seth Leonard. Sorry. Yes. It's going to be a great show. So I hope you'll watch. So thank you so much for joining us and keep on watching. We'll see you all soon. Thank you. Take care.