 Thank you. Welcome back to the House Education Committee on Wednesday, February 17th. We are doing a walkthrough of H106. This is the community schools bill, and Jim Demery is going to walk us through the bill, and then we will welcome Heather Boucher, the deputy secretary, who will give us an idea of where the administration's response to these efforts. So welcome, welcome back, Jim Demery. Nice to see you again. Nice to see you too. Sorry about the waste of oil. Yeah. I'm very distracted by other things. So, uh, Jesse, can I share the screen? Yes, Jim. You are all set as a co-host. Okay, thank you. And people see this. Yes, no? And if you can't, you can find it on our website. Okay. Okay, so for the record, Jim Demery, we are walking through draft 2.1 of your committee amendment to H106, which deals with community schools. So the title and the findings have not changed from before. So I won't go through those in detail. I'll go right to the heart of the bill. And this bill was about 18 pages before, and now it's down to eight pages, I believe. Yes. So the purpose here, line nine, is to support a pilot program for the implementation of community school programs that provide students with equitable access to high quality education. So we have definitions, but many, many fewer than before. We have the coordinator definition, which again, to remind you is a four-part time staff member serving in an outlet school or SU, and is responsible for the identification, implementation, and coordination of a community school program. So this bill is now a lot about hiring in that position. That's what this bill does. Grant funding to facilitate the hiring of that position. The community school program is the same as before, has the four elements, I won't go through them again, but integrated student supports, expanded and enriched learning time and opportunities, active family and community engagement, and collaborative leadership and practices. So the four elements are the same as before, and together they define the community school program. The outlet school, again, is unchanged, but to remind you, it is a public elementary or secondary school that has a student by what least 40% of students are eligible for free or reduced per lunch, or has been identified for comprehensive or targeted supports. Our grant needs grants under this section. So here's where it's changed. We have two very short sections now. B is the authorization. So it says the sexual education is authorized to provide annual pilot grants of $110,000 a year for a period of three years for each eligible school to hire a community school coordinator to develop and implement a community school program. So that is three years worth of funding for each eligible school to help cover that cost. Grant administration is a sector of education, so I'm going to show the pilot program. We'll develop the grant application and provide funding on or before December 1st of each of 2022, 23, and 24. If the amount appropriated is insufficient, it can be appropriated. And second and third year grant funding, if the secretary finds the opportunity to make institution progress through developing and implementing a community school program. And then the agency has to provide technical support, so provide information and support and help identify funding sources that might be available. And then the use of grant funding has changed too. And eligible applicants are used to pilot grant funding to hire a community school coordinator to develop and implement a community school program. During the first year, the coordinator shall conduct the needs and assets assessment of the school to determine what is necessary to develop a community school program and an action plan to implement that program. Then the second and third years of grant funding, the community school coordinator shall oversee the implementation of the program. And then there's an evaluation section that says at the end of each year of grant funding, the three years, at the end of each of those three years, each eligible applicant that received funding shall undergo an evaluation designed by the agency. And then at the end of the program, the agency will report back to you. Appropriation funds is unchanged at $1.529 million from the Education Fund. And besides the 1% for informational and technical assistance, and 2% for the evaluations required. And the effective date is on passage. Okay, thank you. I just want to just alert folks that this right now is a grant program in this language, looking at using the Ed fund. I want folks to just hold a little bit of the conversation about about the financing, because obviously this is something that would be appropriate for the CARES funding. So we're going to try to focus a little bit more on the program, and then we'll sort out all that money later. Representative Toof, did you want to say something before we go? I just have a question. I can't find the update on the website, and all I can find is the as introduced. Okay. It was just, if you refresh the committee page, the documents part, you'll see it. There it is. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. Okay. Secretary Boucher, thank you so much for joining us. I know that you just recently got this draft, and we're interested to hear it. We do know that the Secretary had mentioned something about full service schools at one point. So we're interested to see if there's something we can work out here. Yes. Thank you for the record. Dr. Heather Boucher, Deputy Secretary for Education. Happy to be here this morning with you all. So in general, I think we really do like many components of this bill and certainly strongly support the findings and purpose. Certainly, it's critical that Vermont's education system work collaboratively with other entities to ensure that students are healthy, both physically and mentally, and ready to learn. In addition, we certainly support district efforts to work collaboratively with families and all staff and educators to bring about these goals. We also agree that an approach focused on our most vulnerable families and students is definitely appropriate in this area. So my comments are not voluminous, because as I said, in general, we support the components. We support many components of the bill. I think the punchline is how to make sure that our existing and just about to be happening efforts around recovery align with the work of this bill. And so I hope to actually assist in how that might look. Great. So as you know, this bill is framed around four pillars detailed in a report by the Learning Policy Institute. And this framework is interesting and definitely compelling. I would just want to say that significant work under at least two of the pillars is already underway. And that's kind of what I alluded to just a moment ago. So as part of our state education recovery process and plans that will actually be required from our LEAs, and that guidance is coming out within the week, LEAs are going to be required to identify a recovery team at their supervisory union or supervisory district level and a point person for interfacing with a local state team that is assigned to them to assist with recovery. And this you may remember from when we came and talked about at a 30,000 foot level what the recovery planning would look like. So the state teams are going to include ideally staff from agencies and obviously AOE, but also mental health and children and families. That's our goal so that we're actually bringing to bear a pretty individualized support team for each LEA depending on what their needs assessment around three different buckets for student outcomes shows. So that's kind of a review just to remind you of that. And those buckets just really quickly are social, emotional, mental health and well-being, truancy, or student hopefully re-engagement or engagement and then academics. So given that this structure is going to be in place as a part of COVID recovery, we advise taking up the community school coordinator piece next session and really mean that. As I spoke with Representative James, really, really mean that because we do see a lot of promise in this bill, but we just want to make sure we kind of tee this up so that it makes the most sense given what LEAs can lift at this time. So we advise again taking up that coordinator piece next session because this will be the timing when LEAs will have already put into place the underlying structure at the district level that can support school level positions such as our conceptualized in the bill. So that's one of our pieces that we would urge discussion of. And then the second pillar expanded learning time, of course, including after school, before school, summer activities, is also an important component of certainly robust education systems that we definitely support. We urge the committee to review the report from the Universal Afterschool Task Force that is also imminent, as I understand, before launching this component of the initiative, because this group has been meeting for the past several weeks on this very topic. And it makes sense to incorporate that work into this bill before fully moving forward. And hopefully that's not surprising to folks. And then collaborative decision making, the third or the fourth pillar actually is a core component of robust MTSS, multi-tiered systems of support systems at the LEA level. So we suggest that this strand of the bill perhaps interface more directly with our MTSS statutes that we already have on the books because it really parallels a lot of one component of that system. Finally, we agree that not enough state level or systemic focus currently exists in Vermont on how to best engage parents and families. And I would say professionally and personally, it's long been a puzzle to me because historically a lot of great work on family engagement has been happening right down the road in Massachusetts at Harvard. And we never have seemed to make that connection. I think simply because we're just swamped always, but we really are excited about that strand. And it really is a gap, we would argue as well from a statewide or systemic perspective. So we support efforts that strive to better improve communication and outreach to families, particularly those who are most vulnerable. And we don't really see, we see that there's a real need and a current gap for that definitely at the moment. So then just in terms of a few considerations specifically about the grants, definitely we agree with a focus on historically marginalized students. But one thing we would caution is that perhaps consider removing the language about identification for comprehensive school supports under ESSA and I might not have that exact wording correct. What that might do actually is if we use that as a required criterion for these grants, it could actually unfortunately have long-term effects on how federal title dollars can then be spent. So we need to be careful about that. So that's really just a kind of a nitpicky thing. But anytime we actually require something from the state, it narrows our ability then to use federal dollars for that. So to keep it kind of the way the other components under that section are about based on poverty, based on need, just keeping it like at that level, we would recommend. And the other thing, a couple more points, I think as the committee knows at the agency of Ed, we've been working to bolster a district or SU focus and all of our initiatives to best ensure equity among schools both within each district, SU and then across the state. And in addition, it's not really schools who would be applying for funds because they're not fiscal agents on their own. So we urge consideration of the target to be school districts for this grant funding or regional collaboratives of districts or schools for this program, as opposed to a focus that's really on a school by school paradigm. That's kind of what we have right now. And so we're hoping to actually have a more systemic approach where we can be assured that all of our schools have components that are part of a community schools framework. So I hope that makes sense. And then the last piece, I would say, there's just one section that seems to read as though a predetermined sum of funding would automatically go to each school. And we would recommend that we just that the bill just keeps it at a more overall appropriation level so that then individual again, consortia or groups of districts or even a singular district could actually apply based on their own individual needs. Again, they're going to be doing a needs assessment for these three outcomes for students as part of recovery. And as you all certainly know, the needs around systemic supports vary depending on the geography of our state, depending on what's already been set up at the district level. So we think it's actually a better use of taxpayer resources to actually have that global sound and then allow the budgets to actually drive the application budgets to drive how much money actually goes to that local level. And that very well may have been the intent of the grant, but there was just one piece and I can send Jim that component that kind of struck me as being a little bit of odds with that. That's all I have. So happy to take questions. Thank you. Questions? A percent of James. And then ready. Thank you. And thanks so much. I know you want to say Heather, it's okay. Sorry, that's why I bogged down. Anyway, I was trying to be formal. Thank you so much for coming. So I think this is a lot of really important and great feedback. I have a global question and a specific question. The bill was envisioning, as you said, kind of a set amount for each district or for each community school coordinator. And I had wondered about that level of funding that maybe that wouldn't be appropriate. One of the things that I thought about was, well, should this be rolled out at the district level? But then I worried that that would undercut the entire concept, you know, of neighborhood schools and community schools. And that if you start looking like, say, I think about Tecanic and Green where, you know, the schools and the communities within that district are really different. And they have very different levels of free and reduced lunch students and different community needs and different community resources, you know, from, from Danby to Manchester. So what do you, what do you think about that? And then I'll get to my second question. Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I apologize if my testimony on focusing at the district meant to imply that all schools within a district would have the same characteristics or would would be uniform, because that's definitely not the case. So we would definitely want to continue to afford attention to that uniqueness of schools. And I do think that's a real critical part of the bill. And we agree with, however, just factually, there can't be grants awarded to schools. That's just not how our dollars work right now. And we, we, we would still argue that it's actually incumbent upon the broader district to actually take responsibility for what's happening in those schools. So to really honor their variability and honor what's unique and special about them, but also have an eye toward the incredible inequities that we see across, you know, schools within a particular SU. So I think that there's a way we can do both. And I did not want to imply that this is really a way to steamroll the school voice or, you know, falsely make them all the same. That's not really what I'm trying to communicate. So you could see a world in which there's a community schools coordinator working at the district or SU level who is still nonetheless rolling out or implementing a different version of the program that meets each school's needs. Yes, that's one model. It also could be a model where there is a community school coordinator at each school, but they, they do have to come together at a district level in some way to actually work together and collaborate. Okay. And then my second question, and then I'll, I'll get out of the way is that, so you and I had already spoken. So I, you know, I certainly wasn't surprised by any of your comments that you see some of the work on these three pillars really being kind of underway in a parallel universe this year, you know, the afterschool task force and that you don't want to complicate or duplicate that work elsewhere. So I guess my question is, in your perfect world, would you see a portion of this like, you know, any one of these pillars, maybe the community and or maybe the parent engagement being something that we could start working on this year or move forward in some way this year so that everything is not waiting. So that if we, you know, what can we do this year to make sure that if we move a different bill next year, everything comes together and that parent engagement piece of it hasn't just been dead in the water. So absolutely. And that's actually what I was trying to, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to. That's it. I thought you were finished. I'm never finished. But yeah, that's exactly it. So I think, you know, we really support moving forward with some attention to student or family participation and engagement because that's not something that any existing to our knowledge statewide initiative is focused on. And we also really support the collaborative decision making and leadership model that is I think the third pillar. We just wanted to say if, you know, moving forward, we support, it's just perhaps take a look at what's already in MTSS, but it wasn't meant to say pause. There's a lot of work happening on that really for us. The big one that is, you know, the biggest, I would say yellow flag is the actual position, which I know is the meat of the bill, but it's because we're actually, you know, planning to be helping districts use their ESSER funds to set up some of these underlying structures that I think next year we would have a much better sense of, and then it would actually improve the bill a lot more because you would have a better sense of like what model would work better. Would it be a district level coordinator who would be responsible for all the schools or would it be as the bill is currently written? No, actually it makes sense that there's a coordinator within each school, but they all report to in some fashion the district to make sure that they're all aligned and integrated. So that's kind of our biggest, if we have a concern, it's that piece because we want, you know, we're going to be requiring under the emergency order that schools do some of this work. It might not be called the exact same thing, but what we're going to require as part of education recovery from the pandemic will actually tee up the next set of this, which we would see as a much more permanent component of a well-functioning education system. Similarly, after school has not really been, after school has this other work going on with it in terms of universal after school, which does overlap to some extent with recovery, but it's also kind of standing alone. There was a lot of work already happening on universal after school and extended time. So for that, we just wanted the committee to make sure that they take a look at what that working group's going to come out with in terms of suggestions. Does that help? Claire, five bit more. Okay. Great. That was my intention. So Representative Brady. Thank you. I think this is kind of following in the same line. Thanks so much for all of your feedback on this, of where we were. And I'm thinking especially about those recovery teams and the work that's going to happen in every district. And I see your point about, you know, not wanting to kind of duplicate or overlap roles here. On the other hand, though, I wonder, will those task courses, those, you know, those re-engagement teams, obviously they'll come with some state staff or resources, but are there, and you alluded to this with Esser, but are there, is there new money that districts are going to have to do that work because it's going to put a tremendous amount of new work on existing staff? And so I'm concerned about the capacity. And so it makes me wonder if there is a place for this in this year and that maybe we have a couple districts that are kind of piloting sort of turbo recovery, like a turbo, you know, having extra coordination, an extra way to tap into resources in a community. And clearly we want to target it to communities we know that are going to have high needs. I mean, I'm thinking of, we've heard some testimony from districts where they have no in-person learning happening at grade levels, you know, places like that where there's where there's going to be such a need. I'm not, I guess I'm not convinced that there isn't a need to do even more than what will be the sort of the bar across the state. Sorry, that's kind of a muddled question, but I'm trying to see if there isn't still some place for it here. No, it's actually a great question. It's one that I was just thinking about as I took another quick peek at the bill. So it's hard to say, so our vision is that superintendents will be using, you know, and their teams will be using ESSER dollars. Part of that we had already anticipated would certainly be for hiring staff. Some districts, for instance, are probably going to need to hire some folks if they can find them to go find students who have kind of been lost. So this could definitely be part of that for sure. It's just unclear to me at this point how much would be needed. So I don't think that's, I don't think that that's a no, that's a terrible idea. I just think we don't know yet like how those funds are all going to shake out. So I guess we might be comfortable if we say, let me think about that more, but look, I could see like, you know, we could also put into some of our guidance, like, you know, consider school and or district-based community schools coordinator in our guidance that's going out, because I think that would be part of the universe of, again, what we would anticipate. So I think that there are ways to integrate this. I'm not, you know, I don't want us to come across because that's not what our intention is to say there's no way to integrate. It's just the devil's in the details. And so I'm happy to kind of think through that. And we don't know yet what the dollar amounts would be. I think that's the tricky piece. And I think that the committee is, is aware of that. And I'm kind of putting the money aside at the moment as, as we certainly, so I don't think we need to get particularly specific about any finances because that's going to be emerging. We just know it's going to need some money. We don't know how much. We don't know how we're going to do it. But if we can get the tenants of what we're trying to do down, I think would be helpful. Representative Austin. Yes, thank you. I'm wondering about going to the parent engagement, family engagement. I'm wondering if there could be a hybrid model in terms of offering parent Zoom and in-person connections. And I'm just wondering if you, if the agency has collected any data during COVID to see if family engagement increased because it was more convenient to do it in a Zoom conference than in person. I don't know if we specifically have collected that. It's possible some of the Vermont advocacy groups have, depending on what their particular frame of mind or perspective is. But anecdotally, I would say that, yes, we have heard that just like with some students who are actually doing better in a remote or hybrid perspective or paradigm, there are some places where they have seen an uptick in family engagement because it isn't just about having to schlep into school. You can actually hop on. And I think we've seen a lot of that with local school board engagement, for instance. So moving a lot of, well, moving pretty much all of local school board meetings online, I think has, from what I understand, again, I don't have the data on that from what I understand has really increased significantly the amount of community participation. So I think those are really good ideas and hopefully would be part of the framework as we move out of the pandemic. Like what do we get part of? Like what do we want to keep about things we had to do during COVID-19, during that sort of response that we actually want to keep as part of our system moving forward? Because they actually, none of us would have ever wanted to say there were good things about a pandemic, but they actually worked pretty well. Thank you. I remember saying, James, is that a new hand? It is a new hand. And it's just for a quick comment, which is to sort of say or remind, this is just, it goes to Brady's comment about, could we do some, could we turbo charge some schools? And just a reminder that this is really just intended to be a pilot grant program, not a statewide initiative that's mandatory for all schools in all districts. So you know, I'd love to see some schools or districts have the chance to try this, you know, next year under a grant, under a pilot structure. Thank you. I think what is so interesting about this concept, we have a waiting study, which at some point will likely be implemented with some reweights on students in poverty. And just looking at ways that districts that could see additional dollars coming their way, that it might not just be about tax rates, but might actually be addressing some of the underlying conditions. And as we know that poverty is a community problem. It's, it's, it ends up in the schools. So the interest in this is really to address some of our long standing issues. And also, I think some of us have been to a few schools that are considered community schools. And it was really moving, seeing what was happening there, that there was a community, the community engagement was really, really moving to see what was going on, as well as the students. So it's an exciting model. I really appreciate that the administration is working on some of these things related to our recovery and the fact that we do have a lot of S or dollars that will be going to schools. So I guess what I would, I would ask perhaps is if a few of you could get together, I think maybe representative James and representative Brady, we're working on this to, to maybe sit down with, if you would be available again, Dr. Boucher and absolutely to sit with Jim Demeray and see if, if something we could work something out in this regard. So that would be, be very helpful. And I think that would be it for now, unless there are any other questions. Jim Demeray just wanted to see if there was any, anything that you needed to say or ask of Dr. Boucher at this point. No, at this point, I think, I think we can get together as a small group and work inside that the best we're for. So happy to be involved in that. This would be to go into the cafeteria and grab some lunch and see if you can figure it out. That's now a chat room, isn't it? And I think that that, that would be helpful. It's difficult to do it with, in a whole committee. I can start an email to get the four of us together. Great. Perfect. Thank you so much. Great, thank you. And wow, we're ahead of schedule. There's something for you. Any other just thoughts about this from the committee? And then I'll give you a little break. 1050, I think we were going to take up the, the current action related to procule schools. Anything from anybody? Okay. And, and excuse me, is Peter T. Chow joining us?