 Good afternoon. I'd like to start by reflecting on the tragedy that occurred in Parkland, Florida one year ago today, where 14 students and three teachers were killed. My sincere sympathy goes out to the friends and loved ones of those lost, as well as to the entire school and community who endured such a senseless, tragic, and horrific event. As you all know, almost simultaneously, we came ever so close to our own tragedy right here in Vermont. To the Fairhaven community, thank you for your courage and supporting each other. I know this has been a difficult year. Despite the challenges you've faced, you have made a difference across Vermont, and I'm pleased to have Brooke Olson Farrell, the superintendent of the Addison Rutland Supervisory Union, which includes Fairhaven High School here with us today. Brooke, I thank you for your leadership and care for your students, especially following that very difficult situation. In response to the averted threats in Fairhaven, the community, the state, law enforcement, educators, and elected officials stepped up to take quick action to strengthen the safety of our schools and communities. But this is an area where we must continue to focus, which is why I'm pleased to be here today to announce a joint initiative between my administration and the Vermont NEA. Don Tinney will share details next, but in summary, we are partnering to announce a public service announcement contest. We are inviting students to create a See Something, Say Something PSA, which will be used by the Agency of Education, the Vermont NEA, and others to promote awareness and the importance of reporting school safety threats across the state. I can't underscore enough the value of this initiative from my perspective. As I pointed out last year, it was only by the grace of God, and more importantly, the courage of a young woman who spoke up when she saw something that wasn't right. In my opinion, it's because of her efforts we in Vermont didn't suffer a tragedy like Parkland. It's our hope that by raising awareness about the importance of reporting threats of violence of any kind, we can further strengthen the safety of our schools and communities, and Vermont will continue to be one of the safest and healthiest states in the country. I want to thank the Vermont NEA for partnering on this effort, and I want to recognize the work of so many who contribute to the safety of our schools and communities, including our Agency of Education, Department of Public Safety and Local Law Enforcement, Vermont Emergency Management, the School Safety Center, the School Crisis Planning Team, and all our educators, administrators, and school employees. Thank you for your work, and thanks for being here today as well. I also want to give a special call out to Rob Evans, who leads our School Safety Center. He couldn't be here today, but his leadership and expertise are critical to this work. And finally, before I turn it over to Vermont NEA President, Don Tinney, to describe this contest, I also want to recognize that today is Suicide Prevention Day here at the State House. It's so important for us to bring attention to this issue, and I appreciate those who are here today to do so. So with that, Don, thank you. Thank you, Governor Scott. Nothing is more important than the safety and security of our schools that protect our students from harm. While we are fortunate to live and work and learn in one of the safest states in the nation, recent events make it abundantly clear that what has happened elsewhere can happen here. As we mark the grim anniversary of the Parkland shootings and continue to mourn the deaths of 17 wonderful people, we are reminded that but for the voice of students, tragedy could have visited us here. As Governor Scott said, it was a young adult who alerted authorities and helped thwart a potential deadly shooting at Fairhaven Union High School. And just a few weeks ago, another young person helped prevent a similar possibility in Middlebury. We know that students listen to their peers. That is why my fellow educators and I are proud to work with the Governor to unleash the creativity of our students in helping make sure our schools are safe haven for everyone, especially the young people whose parents entrust us with their care every single day. This contest calls on our middle and high school students to work on 25 second or 55 second video spots that will urge their peers to talk to teachers, administrators, community members or parents if they are aware that fellow students are contemplating hurting themselves or others. The spots which will be made in connection with an established digital technology or video production program school should highlight the simple fact that it takes the entire community to make us truly safe in a way that students can relate to. It is our hope that together we can prevent a tragedy before it starts. I would like to turn it over to Public Safety Commissioner Tom Anderson. Good afternoon everybody. See something, say something. It seems so easy. It seems like such a simple concept, but we know that it's not. People are often afraid or worried to speak up or tell someone that something doesn't seem quite right and that's especially true for young people. We have to change that. This initiative is designed to empower students to be proactive in keeping their schools and their communities safe. Frankly, students are uniquely equipped to stand as an important line of defense against violence in schools. We just heard the NEA chair say that sometimes they listen to their peers. Sometimes that's the only people they listen to. No one has their fingers on the pulse of what's happening in our schools with their peers and on social media like students do. What better way to empower students to feel comfortable about speaking up than by having students develop the message. We need our kids' talent to teach their peers, their teachers, their parents, frankly all of us, about the importance of speaking up. Empowered students need to be a big part of our effort to prevent school violence. The last 12 months have been eye-opening in Vermont. One can only imagine how different this state might have been if one brave young person had not said something to authorities about the things she had heard from Jack Sawyer. But that was not the only instance in which a teenager spoke up in averted a potential lack of violence at school. A brave student in Middlebury spoke up. A brave student in Linden spoke up. And both of those resulted in inappropriate actions being taken. Through these incidents we have learned that Vermont is not immune to the threats and tragedies experienced in schools across the country. We have learned important lessons from these experiences and we have used those lessons to inform our shaping of school safety and preparedness efforts statewide. So I want to encourage every single student in the state of Vermont to enter this video contest. We need your talent, your ideas, and your engagement. And even if you don't enter the video contest, you can always help our efforts. The Vermont School Safety Center is all ears. You can reach out via schoolsafety.vermont.gov to share ideas or concerns. And if you see something, say something. To a teacher, to an administrator, to a parent, to a cop, to anyone who might be able to help. Finally, I want to acknowledge the work of the Vermont School Crisis Planning Team and my team at the Department of Public Safety for their continued work on school safety issues. I particularly want to thank Rob Evans as the governor did. He has really been the tip of the spear on this and to Don Tinney for their work on this initiative. It's now my pleasure to turn the podium over to Deputy Secretary Heather Boucher. Governor Scott and others have noted already this afternoon there are few things more important to a community than the safety and well-being of its children and adolescents. Clearly, ensuring that our schools are safe, welcoming places for all students is one of the most important roles we have as state leaders. With this paramount paramount responsibility in mind, the AOE, Agency of Education, is proud to support the governor's partnership with the NEA on this competition. Asking students to take ownership of this important topic through a school safety PSA is a great way to make safety engaging for students and tie it to their learning in the classroom. One of the really appealing aspects of the See Something, Say Something campaign is that it helps students and adults become better upstanders. If you're not familiar with this term, it means standing up and taking action when you hear or see something that is potentially dangerous or just as Commissioner Anderson said not right. This is as opposed to being a bystander where one simply observes and doesn't take action. I want to point out it takes great courage and experience to be a good upstander. That's why there are many ways students can do so. As we've heard, they can tell an adult when they see something. They can also interrupt a concerning interaction by inviting the victim to walk away with them. They can speak out and identify a problematic behavior in the moment saying, hey, that's not cool what you just said. And I think it's important because this is all part of a continuum of making our schools very safe. The action taken will depend largely on the upstander's own personality experience and comfort level. And there's room for all types of actions. That's what is great about this work. And particularly today we're of course highlighting if you see something, say something. By investing in and offering training modules that help both students and adults better understand the options they have, we can truly prevent awful consequences such as those that we've heard about today and that as we know have almost occurred in our own cherished state. So in sum, I'm here to affirm the Agency of Education's strong commitment to improved and consistent school safety. We will do all we can to help coordinate and move forward this important initiative. Thank you. With that, we'd be happy to answer any questions. Much cash is in progress. Donna, so you have that? Sure. So we do have the money, unless you want to give me some more. So the first prize will be a $1,000 check to the program that wins in schools and then second prize is $500 and the third prize is $250. In addition to that, the winning team will also get to be a state trooper for the day and to see another side of law enforcement as well as tours of broadcast facilities. The prize goes to the program? To the program? To the school or to? Right. So it would be to the school program where the videos produced. Sorry. Have you already enlisted some A.D. clubs or academic programs that teach me their production to be a part of? Yeah, absolutely. So I've been talking with Anthony Sorrentino who is the teacher of videography at BFA St. Albans Northwest Tech Center who's been helping me develop the guidelines and what was doable and all that. And I happened to be up there on Monday and ran into one of my former students who's in the program and he's already excited to take it on. So don't tell anybody else that they had a head start on this. Don, there is an age limit on that right on the production. I saw Neil's eyes light up. I thought he was going to be a law enforcement for the day. Other questions? Where do you think we are at with school safety overall? You know what's been accomplished the last year? What's next on the list of things to take care of? I think we've come a long ways. Obviously with the $5 million worth of grants making some improvements throughout the state. This is going to be an ongoing effort. We've proposed another million and a half dollars in the budget for this year to take care of some unmet needs. And I believe that this may be an ongoing effort as we move forward. So the legislature looked forward to the discussion with them on this and I believe that they have the same thoughts that we need to take care of our kids. You mentioned suicide prevention day here at the State House. Do you see or hear anything today that made you rethink a waiting period? Well, obviously, as I've said before, I don't believe that we need to change our gun laws at this point in time. I understand how tragic this is and my heart and sympathy goes out to those who have been affected. I think we've all been affected by this in some way. But I'm not sure that it solves the problem. And again, I'm willing to listen and I'm sure that it will get some time in the legislature in order to make a consideration. But I'm just not sure that that's the answer to the problem. We have to go to the underlying the root of the problem. And that's why my prevention task force that is going to be coming forward is taking a look at some of the underlying issues of some of these root causes. Local government day here in the State House and a lot of local officials are pretty upset by your budget because they say it results in a $6.6 million reduction in state aid and town highway programs. Why did you need to move forward with that cut? Well, first of all, I think we need to be accurate about what that is. $6 million was an increase of the last couple of years for stormwater mitigation. And that's where the money went to stormwater mitigation. It wasn't to roads and bridges per se. So with our focus going to different areas in terms of water treatment and cleanup and so forth, we want to we want to shift the focus and there's some reduction in federal funds for matching funds. We had to make ends meet. It's a constant struggle. But I again, this was in stormwater mitigation. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, they could be some of these. Are there any other questions for the group here? I'd actually like to ask for the superintendent question. Oh, there you are. Sure. How are things going? I think I think they're going well. We have a tremendously resilient community in terms of our staff and students. And we really have taken a community caretaking approach where everyone has banded together to really support one another and the school. And I fully believe Fairhaven is one of the safest schools in Vermont, if not the country. Did you did you get any additional security through the grant program? We only received about $9,000 and that is because many of the infrastructure pieces outlined in the grant we had already done previous to the grant. Do you think students will be receptive to the kind of peer to peer call that this effort is encouraging? Absolutely. This is something that we promote in our school. We actively talk to students about the see something say something campaign. And we already have students that will come forward if they're concerned about a staff or student. What kind of change have you seen in the students at the school since this all transpired? I think we have really taken the approach of really enabling them, making them feel empowered in control of their own safety. And that has to do with the see something say something campaign options based training drills. And so I think all of those pieces really help them feel safer. Have you seen any increases in mental health services or school absences or anything that might reflect there's some ongoing emotional problems? So initially after the event we did have an uptick in student absences. Since that time we have had an increased number of students that have opted out on school choice or early college. The exact numbers that are attributed to this event I'm unsure. But you know we're still working with traumatologists and have a therapy dog program and other other pieces in place to really help the students with resiliency. It's not something that I can really talk about at this point because of where the case is. I'm not sure. I think, wow I'm really on the spot here. Kids are far more creative than us adults. So I think you know I have pretty teenage sons of my own and I think just stressing with them that it's not tattling on someone or you know that this is really about taking care of one another and making them feel secure in that decision. I think as well you know my fear is that if we don't continue to talk about this and have these types of programs and make sure that people know students know that they can they should say something if they see something they'll forget. Just like we've forgotten in a lot of ways we take things for granted over time it's lost. I don't think it's lost upon many of the students that we're not right now because it's so real it happened a year ago but what happens you know two years from now or three years from now we have to it's continual training I believe to make sure that we don't let our guides down. Humping back to the infrastructure discussion. A lot of cities and towns you're asking for a forced increase in the gas tax because they can't fix your roads. What do you think of that? You mentioned taxes and everybody runs their bills. Yeah obviously you know our infrastructure is really important to us and we're seeing you know this is this is a result of a lot of our vehicles becoming much more efficient than they were one time. So you know it's good news in some respects that we're getting better miles per gallon but when we're charging tax by the gallon it means fewer dollars coming in the copters and we're all suffering from that. We in terms of like the zero mission vehicles that we're promoting we we need to look for it to make sure that there's a source of funding to to fund the transportation programs that we have but but again it's a constant struggle for us across the board whether it's water or sewer or storm or our roads our bridges you know it's a constant battle. We have made some ground in terms of our bridge infrastructure incremental and that's that's good news but we have a long ways to go. From all the good cities and towns it's a sign of resolution saying they support this forced increase in the gas tax as long as it's you know carved out and dedicated to town highway programs would you support that? Yeah I'm not in favor of an increase in the gas tax at this point in time. The select board chair in Waterbury says this town needs about 25 million dollars in road work. Well they're going to get that really soon because it's a big project that just was let in their community that's going to redo Main Street so they're going to get their they're going to get Main Street but they're not going to get all the roads and most towns are not going to get a fraction of what they need is do Vermonters just need to accept that we're never going to catch up and we just are going to triage. Well I don't know if we're never going to catch up because we we are catching up a little by little we're catching up there are better methods in terms of construction we're learning a lot more and and I and I believe that we are making incremental gains but but not fast enough obviously I mean we just especially with the with the difference of the climate change that they were experiencing the incredible ranges of temperatures the frost freeze frost cycles that they were seeing and the thawing has made for surfaces in particular problematic. So do you think town governments need more money do you agree with the premise they're saying we need more money we're going to responsibly maintain our highway infrastructure. Well here's my answer to all of that I mean it's a common theme that I talked about a lot we need more people in Vermont if we want better roads and better bridges we need more taxpayers if we want if we want more of our water and sewer infrastructure we need more taxpayers we need more people here where that's that's our problem we don't have as many people paying into the system as we once did and the aging demographic is resulting in fewer people in our workforce I mean these are these are real issues and so what we need to do is focus on that and that area and bring more people in so that we have more more revenue. As you as you work to incentivize homeowners to buy EVs do you have a plan to capture a revenue source that will help fix the road? There is a there is a proposal and I believe that this is something that's working its way through I'm looking for help at this point but I believe that from the charging infrastructure for the EVs that there's going to be there's a proposal to charge a portion of that so that it can go back to the transportation fund but I'll I'll check that out to be sure. That was introduced last year but I don't remember any of the details. Yeah I think maybe a study done on it tonight I believe we're moving full that that as opposed to like a mileage fee or something like that. The PUC is doing rate design right now on how to design charges whether it's home or public infrastructure etc so that is something they're currently doing that charge for them to do this rate design is something that we last year's to know. You have proposed the fee on fuller developments and other renewable developments there's a lot of concern on that because that's going to slow development of the renewable sector. Yeah well everyone wants you know some oversight of some of these projects and the fee structure is part of that oversight so I think it's necessary in terms of making sure that these projects are viable and this is what we want so we need the fees in order to do that. What do you think about the Act 46 sort of concession what the Education Committee came out with for Act 46 that was passed by the House? Yeah I'm supportive of giving them more time. I think it has a lot of merit to pass with a large amount of support. I will see what happens in the Senate. I haven't I haven't spoken to anyone in the Senate to see whether that's acceptable or not but from my standpoint I think it fills that need. Senate Economic Committee passed a minimum wage bill out have you taken a look at it yet? I have not it's probably I don't I wouldn't imagine it's much different than it was last year. Yeah it's substantially similar. Any evolution? Again my concerns are the same I fear for our rural areas of the state particularly the east inside of our state where we're right across the river from New Hampshire who has a minimum wage of $7.25. You said you couldn't support an increase in the gas tax which your primary concern? Just a more tax burden on Vermont. I mean again let's let's talk about New Hampshire I don't know if you've been in New Hampshire lately but you don't you only have to drive across the river and enjoy about what I saw one day of 30 or 40 cent reduction in the per gallon cost of fuel. You've got a I don't know near record if not record number refreshment in the house this year. I don't know to what extent you've gotten around and talked to all of the new faces around here but what do you think? Well so far so good I mean that you know we've this is a clean slate as I said a different approach. We the reception's been been good cordial civil we we appreciate that we're trying to pay more attention as well we had the freshman in for breakfast at the on the fifth floor just to get to know them a little bit and be a resource for them so I'm encouraged by what I'm seeing. And a lot of them are younger and that sort of represents the kind of Vermont you're trying to promote. Exactly if we can just you know work together on trying to find proposals that will incentivize and bring more people into the state a younger healthier population helps everything. What's the word on how invention the workplace is going? We've had some feedback from some of the agencies there's quite a lot of support for this and they're working their way through it so we'll we'll see who the first is but I'm not aware of anyone that's that's taken advantage of it at this point but we've heard there's a few pop the possibilities we're not naming names. No yet though in the workplace. Not that I've seen but I know within the next month or two there may be some. There's a couple bills that have raised the smoking issue 21 and I think one the retirement is probably to change their own smoking age to use 400. Yeah you know I'm not opposed but I'm not leading the charge on this we'll see how it works this way through in the legislature. So that's something that you've been supporting? If there's enough support and you know I'm not a I'm not a smoker myself never have been and and I see the dangers of of smoking and vaping and so forth so I'm not opposed to it but I'm not leading the charge. You've never smoked a cigarette? Never have. Wow. Vermont used to used to have community rating in its health insurance plans and people didn't seem to like it back years ago because it it made it things more expensive for certain sub sectors of Vermont. It sounds like you're you're talking about at least the age rate setting. Why does that make sense and isn't that going to drive across on older Vermont? Well no I you know we'll see I mean this is something that we're we want to take a look at where we're just asking for others to to at least consider it. We desperately need as I've said we need more people in the state particularly more workers youth and so forth so some of that is to encourage them to stay here and and I talk about the affordability of our states and in health care is one of the costs associated with that so if we can encourage if this is an attraction if this will bring more people into the state as a result then it spreads the pool it builds builds the pool so a younger healthier population that doesn't you know on average it doesn't utilize health care as much I think would be would be beneficial so it could actually you know help with the overall costs of health care. Has your team done any preliminary work to determine if there will be winners and losers? No I don't believe we've gone that far but again we're in the beginning stages we want to to see if there's any appetite for this and particularly when we're we're trying to find again different approaches different ways to bring more people in and when you look at the there's a category I'm going to say 25 to 35 there's there's about 10% that don't have health care now and probably because of the costs. It's not among the highest. I think it's the highest category we have. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.