 Okay, welcome back to Senate education. Mr. Nichols, thanks for joining us. You probably Occasionally do I don't always get the time I'd like to yeah, sometimes like issues with sports racism come Really appreciate and I have to say after this last get a testimony it Your work is so important because it's whoever's that head of school principle Sets the culture and their consistency and how do we keep people there? You know, I know you said earlier on this year that you had Large percentage of new principles 31% yeah, some of which 31% turn on turn on. Yeah, but still that's huge So we have you here today Senator Williams had asked some questions and we all kind of jumped on to them also around helping us to understand teacher evaluations Process tenure, whatever that might look like you arrive in Vermont You want to teach? We just heard a little bit from St. John's very Academy that sort of tiered system You can just help us understand what what's happening out there and how it works Sure, I'll give you a little overview a high-level reveal and then answer any questions Did they get a copy of my self I sent you they do okay We're tired for that logo. I wanted to use So for the record J. Nichols executive director the Vermont Principles Association been asked to discuss teacher evaluation preparation for this I talked to Probably two or three dozen principles. We have drop-in meetings every week So for each of the drop in these the last week I said hey tell me what not your evaluation system and so just to clarify. There's no statewide There's no statewide evaluation system in Vermont. Okay. Yeah, it's all locally all locally done Okay, so essentially what I'm going to share with you is a summary what I know about teacher evaluation general and Vermont specifically and some feedback from the fields as a combination of those three things first of all almost all systems Differentiating between novice teachers and veteran teachers So this is often articulated by collectively bargaining agreements at the local level So what might be true in rich for Vermont might not be true and rich money But typically they have a system that is differentiated and Local school boards and the teachers unions are the ones that negotiate that system looks like some places It's very scripted other places. It's left very open in Vermont We have a statutory language that applies to what we term a probationary teacher and a probationary teacher is a teacher who is either New to Vermont as a teacher or completely new to teaching and their first two years They are probationary under a total 16 1752 and Basically what that law says is if you evaluate the teacher twice in each of those two years You can let the teacher go No harm no foul There's a friend of mine as a lawyer says you can do you can let teacher go for a good reason or no reason You just can't go for a bad reason Can't say I'm letting you go because I found out that you're you know a different bank than I or your different religion Something like that about the school, but you can say, you know, Jay We don't really your teaching performance is what we want. We're looking for somebody is a little stronger in this area We're sorry. We're gonna not renew Then you can let me resign or I can just be non-renew not being terminated They're not breaking my contract contracts are year-to-year to break my contract as a teacher That takes a lot more work and that involves a school board hearing and those types of things because we have the standards called just cause So once I'm past two years as a probationary teacher, I automatically get that just cost So a lot of you don't realize this if I go to I'll use Don and I as examples I used to teach in Albert and Don used to teach in St. If I teach in Albert and I came from New York let's say moved to lower and teaching Albert for two years And then I moved to be a face in ovens I used to be probationary under BFA's contract, but I'm not probation underneath for my law That means I have a right to go through the court systems Underneath a collectively bargain agreement. I have the right to go to arbitration arbitration It's much better for a teacher They win they're more likely to win arbitration and the union will back them if they have to go through a court system Typically the union won't back them because they haven't reached pass the probationary status yet and typically Administrators win their share in in court. So that's the that's the big difference One of the ways to look at this and don't can argue with you Also, the Patriot Lin always tells me that you should look at teaching after your past a tenure Patriot stuck the top from my educational lawyer mistake He says look at teaching as a property right once you're past the tenure piece and we don't say tenure But technically after two after two years you get that You talk about and you've got protections that are set forth because of that. So that's how the system differentiates Your first couple years and that's why I tell principals all time if you have a doubt about a teacher And you don't think they're gonna cut the grade let them go during their first two years, you know say, you know Thanks, I appreciate you trying to be working here But we're gonna go in a different direction and you don't need to have a lot of documentation for that You don't have to put them on an improvement plan or anything like that When it gets to a just cause standard and you've got a really show that you try to help the teacher if it's about performance now Malfeasance is easy Miss Conduc is easy and the teacher is hitting the kid It's really easy to to terminate a teacher and Vermont EA is very helpful With school administrators when they have to do that if a teacher is in subordinate doesn't follow reasonable requests and things like that That's also pretty easy. The harder standard is when you just think somebody's not a good enough teacher And if you're going to rely on that to to not renew somebody after they've already got Operationary status after they've already got essentially well out of states called tenure Then you've got to really build a case showing that that person's not effective and that means a lot of paperwork Observations of their teaching performance showing how they're not making the standard showing how you've got the proven plans to help them try to To improve their performance So just to clarify. Yeah So one statewide policy if you will statute statute two years Then you you do move to just cause that across the entire state Yes, what happens before those two years in terms of how you might get those two years? That's more local. Yeah, that's more local and I should add Just so the case is not clear if I do an evaluation if you know If I'm not one of my teachers and I do evaluation on him the first year is easier and I evaluate him twice during that school year I can't let him go down to that first year I have to wait for the full two years. Okay, so I can do that But I have to evaluate him twice here in that year and if I keep him another year I can evaluate him twice in that year and if I don't I Cannot use a probationary clause. I would have to use the just cause standard and that happens sometimes Please No, I'm good a share cutter, and I'll try to get through this kind of quickly because they just gave you a lot of stats to in Vermont Principles overwhelmingly conclude a teacher evaluation should be differentiated on two factors One is how long the person's been a teacher and two how successful they have been as a teacher a teacher Who's really successful and you know, it's very good in the classroom Doesn't usually the formal observation piece doesn't really typically help them out Where it's helpful for a teacher that's not performing well. Yes Can you back up a step? You said two crates area One one is how long they've been a teacher. Okay, so and the second one is how well they're performing. Okay, and how How do you develop metrics on that? Well, that's that's a great question. We're gonna kind of get to that There's different. There's their standards for teachers and we'll talk about that in just a second. Okay, so The research in the area of teaching evaluation is not succinct. It's not necessarily Clear as to how much teacher evaluation improve teacher performance and student growth Bill Gates spent Hundreds of millions of dollars trying to develop a what's called the value added measure that would show how teachers performance in the classroom impacted students achievement and they went through all kinds of iterations on that and all kinds of top Researchers in the world on that. In fact, when they were doing that that's been done. I met each other We were on task force and Vermont looking at that and the research basically came back and said they could not show a correlation They show sometimes correlation never to show a causation and really what the bigger track was how much family income the family had whether or not the kid was Read to when they were a younger kid all those types of things that we know had more of an impact than the teacher Actually in the classroom in terms of student test scores and student achievement so That's brought us back to teacher evaluation. What works and what doesn't so I wanted to touch on that What works from the principal's perspective in my perspective regular walkthroughs informal observations that are unannounced Where principles or other supervisors are going in the classroom and giving teachers quick feedback on their practice Formal observations, which is when you sit there I meet with you before the lesson maybe it's a couple days before and you say jay I'm going to be teaching about the battle of Gettysburg. These are the standards. I'm going to try to hit We meet with each other and you show me your lesson plan Then I come in and I sit in the class that whole class period and watch you teach I take notes give feedback whatever it is After we sit down and we meet again and we go over that and we discuss how that lesson That's what a formal observation typically looks like Those are pretty effective for brand new teachers in the first couple years And they're also pretty effective for a teacher who's really struggling with their pedagogy So if you're going you're going, you know Nuts and bolts all the way through a lesson with them that really provide them feedback That's when the formal observation piece is pretty effective and typically For teachers that are performing pretty well Every three to five years is when they we get a formal evaluation And that looks different in different places They would get a formal evaluation. So if I'm a pretty effective teacher I was evaluated a couple times four times. Hopefully in my probationary years Now I've taught for a couple more years. I'm doing pretty well My principal pops in my classroom and so on other people do everybody thinks I'm doing fine Then maybe three or four or five years later I will go into what's called the evaluation cycle And then that year I'll get a formal observation I'll get however many walkthroughs that systems agreed to in their collectively bargaining agreement And I'll get some kind of write up sometime in a year or at the end of the year That's an evaluation the research on that is not really very effective The informal walkthrough piece is more effective for most teachers Two other things teacher evaluation in a formal sense pales to teacher coaching There's much more research that supports coaching And feedback and teachers working together in professional learning communities Where they can work collaboratively to look at data suited data model practice for each other And make instructional changes and video can be a great asset here There's a concept called micro teaching which in john haddy's research. He's a top researcher He does meta analysis, which are you take a whole bunch of studies thousands of studies involving maybe millions of kids You bring them all together to find out what practices are the most effective And one of the highest in the top 10 is something called micro teaching and micro teachings where We pick apart your lesson together or you do it yourself and you can do it through video You can have three four teachers in the back of the room doing something called instructional rounds Where one teacher is teaching everybody else is watching taking notes and you meet afterwards and talk about it Those those things have much more impact on a person's performance as a teacher than A formal observation or a formal evaluation process What doesn't work Senator ranger. Oh, sorry. So so what is the standard and who who evaluates? Every teacher is being evaluated or there is no set standard in the monitor. So what about the what about the schools? So this is get this at their own standard. Okay, what they think is effective teaching most school districts use a thing called the charlotte framework For observation and evaluation. I put a link to charlotte's Latest version of it in here for you some links in your st the Very last link is called the ancient spring work and that will show you the rules that they do and that particular system Has four areas that they look for teaching in the first areas used to be called preparation and planning I'm not sure if it's called that anymore. It's all about lesson planning We're asking what this noise is. So I apologize. Oh, okay. We're trying to figure it out. Okay. He's sure me. Okay. Oh, yeah He'll say what's that? I Then there's a second domain in there. Anderson talks about culture and environment third one talks about instruction the fourth one talks about other That framework was not developed as an evaluation system Some administrators got hold of that many years ago. I thought this might be a good evaluation system So then she wrote a book making an evaluation system made millions of dollars and that's the number one used system in the country Well, there's real effective or not. That's up for up for debate Do you ever see Every classroom in Vermont schools having a camera going on. No almost never as a superintendent I tried to get that to happen and I was the union would not support that and the reason they wouldn't support that Is usually when a union doesn't support something there's a rational behind it It's because they were afraid somebody were going to abuse it and we have had cases in Vermont Where people have tried to evaluate the teacher without being in the room By having a hidden camera or you know those OPA systems You can push them on now. You can hear everything going on in school So the principal might be listening to everything going on in a certain class That's different than everybody knows on the camera. Yeah, I'm not saying it's not I mean I have to behave myself in there Yeah, I'm not saying it's not I think cameras would help teachers personally But I am students and then if somebody said something happened you could check to see if you did it So I'm a big believer in cameras, but that hasn't gone anywhere in state or anywhere. That's yeah Okay, you how many years for you a principal? Uh between christmas superintendant 24 That's a long time. I also taught classes in uh supervision and evaluation two percent likes So can you share with us any In your history in your incredible experience after those two years where their teachers that you felt as though Kind of got the green light that shouldn't have sure The answer is yes, absolutely. Yeah, I can yeah like any field. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah And then how do you handle this situation? Let me finish this first little thing So I just want to say things that don't work are collectively bargaining agreements where principals are not allowed to go in the classroom When I started at south burlington It was in the contract that I could not visit the classroom without 24 hours notice to teachers That's not okay. I need to see what's happening with the kids in the classroom And the union blocked me on that as a principal there at the middle school So I didn't know what to do. I went to my superintendent and he said are you going to visit classrooms every day? So I'm sure it's I'm going to try to it goes good every day at uh six o'clock at night Send an email to all staff saying I plan on visiting your classroom tomorrow And we did that for about three weeks and then the union president met with me and said All right, your staff trust you we're not going to bother anymore Just you don't need to send out those stupid emails because that's what I had to do to make sure I could Pull in your classrooms every single day and not violate the contract Um, another thing doesn't work is applying individual teacher evaluations to student test scores. There's too many variables that can't be controlled for a shorter Uh, another thing it doesn't work is allowing a one-time formal observation that's scheduled in advance to count as an example What a teacher is able to do Frequent short walk-throughs and informal observations are much more effective because you find that what really goes on a day-to-day basis in the classroom For example, again, it's out for an example. I started self-growing them I had a teacher those in the evaluation cycles. So even teaching there 25 30 years and I said to him You know, let's have a pre-meeting and stuff and schedule when you want to me and you know And he said well, just let me know whatever you want to do So I got my lesson all set So what do you what do you mean? Because well, I also the same lesson when I'm getting formally observed Observes a really good lesson kids really like it. So well, what if it's what if it's got nothing to do with where you are in the curriculum? Well, it doesn't matter. I also use Ellis That's the kind of dog and pony show you get if you're not thoughtful and don't have a comprehensive system And the other thing principles can find about there's too much paperwork and clients issues and evaluation programs So I used to be a real big person on evaluation I think evaluation is really important But it needs to be doable. It needs to be frequent business It needs to be more about coaching to support and then occasionally Ask to go over that side where Listen, you're on improvement plan. If you don't start doing these things I'm going to be recommending and you're no longer teaching and that is a smaller percentage of teachers And I think it isn't a lot of reviews Nobody goes into teaching thinking. Hmm. This job's gonna be really easy and I'm gonna make a lot of money So typically they're going because they love kids and they want they want teachers Go ahead So to your point What percent percentage of teachers do essentially Get dismissed based on Long-term, you know, they're long-term teachers, you know, they're beyond the probation period You know, is it one percent of the teacher population? It's more than one percent of the teacher population, but it's around one or two percent they dismissed for poor teaching Okay, many more people get dismissed for, you know, disciplinary conditions. Okay All right, thank you. Okay Uh, three or four more five more quick bullets, and then I'm all yours to any questions The current calendar that we have definitely gets in the way of professional development for teachers Because teachers will have a situation where in the beginning of the year they get some professional learning And then the rest of the year they're just learning like crazy and then they get a little professional learning right before summer starts And you know, that's really problematic. It's not not not effective We'd be much better off if we had seven or eight weeks of school Then we could do off where teachers got training in and stuff like that a different type of calendar Also our current teacher prep programs At the colleges need to provide more coaching for future teachers and more apprentice programs to get into future teachers and fund students earlier When I did uh my student teaching I was in classrooms in front of kids a little bit only because I subbed on my days where I didn't have classes and I happened to be The high school baseball coach there and so I was I had that experience A lot of kids don't get that. I think it's better now than it used to be But it's an awful thing if i'm a kid and I go through four years of college Yeah, and then I started I teach a job and say oh my god, I hate this And then I'm saddled with all that debt and I'm not affected Uh, let's see the current staffing shortages and student behavior a month of crisis has made it really hard School years to get into the classroom They tell me all the time now I cannot visit classrooms I cannot do the valuation that they should because I'm spending all my time investigating harassment Paising the bullying issues dealing with student discipline issues Title IX investigations and no time to visit classrooms And finally I put here most systems have the formal evaluation system It is not developed and else uses some version of the charlotte anus and strength Thanks I can tell you at franklin northeast when I was superintendent. We developed our own system Which was pretty effective I was speaking at a national conference apple asked me to come speak which is kind of ironic I'm not a great computer But they wanted me to go teacher evaluation how they could use this new tool They had the teacher vouchers called the ipad you guys probably have heard of it So I went to this conference the ipad it just was just coming out and I spoke about how we could use that kind of technology to go in classrooms and carry it with us and Give feedback to teachers and a person from this company called teach point came up in the afterwards and said We'd like to take what you're doing at franklin northeast Which is all in google at the time and developed that and put it on this power platform called teach point And that's what we did and we had the national standards for for teachers And we used those to create our evaluation system But every system does it different Every system this day has different ways that they do it don't and I served on a task force on teacher evaluation I've got a link to that in here I've also got a link to vermont rubric and stuff like agus So you can see all the stuff that we think the teacher should have but basically that stuff is mostly set on the shelf since Who's the secretary the other league of the armada since our since our model or second yeah So that's where we are with teacher evaluation unrelated question semi related Is there a maximum age for teachers? No, sir. Well, there is not good question. No No maximum no maximum Minority you could be a teacher if you're 18 if you're like, uh The guy in big bang theory whatever his name is that you're like him you're a genius you're 60 and you graduate at the college of okay Yeah, I suspect as the state have we ever looked at this issue, you know in terms of sometimes We had a big committee that worked on it and we came up with that teacher effectiveness guideline Our hope I think was that that would turn into lean into some teacher evaluation And it basically just uh It's on the shelf If you go to ALE's website still there Are you forwarding the game? I already gave it to all of you in your life. Okay, right. Thank you. Yeah They can be a tool to make things better. Yeah, the way it is right now It's not but is it possible after two years teachers been looked at once maybe twice maybe not at all It's possible I teach a new principal's class. I got 51 students in there this year because there's so many new principals in the state and Some of them will comment have a teacher that's in their second year and they'll say What do I do this person's third second year and last year's principal is in evaluate That's problem. So we don't really set any minimum standards statewide. Nope. Well We set standards for teacher effectiveness stuff, but there's no in terms of it doesn't say you've got at least be looked at once No, it says that To be to exercise the not the probationary clause. You must be evaluated twice in a year does not stay with that evaluation It's a look like I might be going to pop into brian's class for one day and write up a memo I could maybe have to call out evaluation. There's never been a court case. It's been challenging. Okay In the wrong Okay, we'll keep working on this. This is helpful. Okay. Okay. Thank you. All right. Let's take five minutes before we start Okay, welcome back to senate education. I believe we have Let's see rob fish and christine hawk was visiting with us again There we are How are you? Are you solo today or is christine also joining? I believe christine's in the waiting area. Okay. Um, but she's not showing up. This is the waiting area. So Let me find out. She thinks she's in the waiting area. Um, of course Sorry for the delay. I'm Trying to find out What's happening here? The irony isn't lost every time I need you pop up The other irony is that none of those reels of fiber have moved yet. All right, let's go to the field She's like, I don't want to grab your picture without that At least half of that I'm going to find her up in calisthenum. I don't know how much Let's start. All right She's not there yet No, I just kind of don't want to find out why christine isn't Isn't here I know she I have to be here and Well, we're happy to start with you rob. If you've got the info I I do have I do have the info. She's typing typing right now started Why don't we get started because we we have only about 25 minutes And uh, sure I want to try to stick to the schedule as closely as we can So when we left off there were you know some outstanding questions, uh, and the two of you didn't have an opportunity to Really, uh, we were having some technological issues Didn't have the opportunity to close the loop on some of this stuff our outstanding question I think in part continues to be we need to make sure Our schools and the homes of kids, you know have broadband Uh, we need it in the schools for all sorts of teaching that And course offerings that might not be there right now and of course we want it in in homes So kids have the same opportunities You know in the kingdom as they do in ruttland as ruttland as they do in bennington, you know right across the board So, uh, why don't you with that fill us in a little bit more from our last conversation Sure. Well, let me pull up some of the maps that we created that Visually describe what the what the coverage level is in each of each of those areas I shall say christine is trying to get in and it's saying she's still in the waiting room Okay, but i'm gonna see her here when she when we see her we will definitely let her in So let me i'm actually going to go to the presentation rather than try to go through the map. You've seen this before Uh Just just showing where the different districts are and i'm going to land right here Uh, so this is what we were working on when we met a lot We met last week of showing the breakdown in coverage in schools across the state right now We don't see anything on our screen. Are you trying to pull something up? I was We also have You have it you have it there and I got I have it now. Sorry. Yes, right here. We go now. You should be seeing in here. So Thank you So this this is the breakdown and i'll point you to the url right here the web address There's an interactive map where you can get Way more specific information about each school district and each school in the state It also shows what districts where wi-fi hotspots were installed to provide some additional level of coverage for those areas that Do not have access right now So looking at looking at the schools across the state The majority of them 68 of them do have a fiber connection schools can access fiber that is not just for There's fiber that's for residential and there's fiber that's for business and consumer and business and community anchors They are able to access that fiber you the For instance, the first slide fiber in the southern part of the state So 68 of the schools are served at 100 by 100 Another 24 are served by cable connections, which are at least 100 by 20 But then there's still seven and a half percent that do not have access to a connection that Under the nti a definition would be considered broadband So they have a connection less than 100 by 20, which is certainly inadequate for everything that a school needs to do I see christine has joined us If that 100 by 20 you can't what can you really do with that if you're a school? Well, that's that's the challenge with 100 by 20 you're talking about 20 as the upload speed When you're trying to connect to remote lessons or doing God for we ever have to go back to doing remote schooling that 20 is not going to be enough It's not enough to allow students to to access Courses from another school or from another country even So it's it's a big limitation and every school at the state Frankly should have a fiber connection and that is That's our goal So in terms of the number of schools you can see that broken down in the bar graph here And then the map, but I do point into the url where you can zoom in and see it a lot clearer So with some of this contingent, you know getting this Getting all the schools to 100 by 100 is a contingent upon The local CUDs is that kind of what's happening in part if if I've got schools in this state where kids Don't have 100 by 100. Is that who I talked to at this point? And at this point that is that is helpful As more middle mile is constructed The schools and the anchor institutions may have access sooner than other residents in the area But if you're in a if you're in a district Where a fiber is going to be built out to the entire district such as southern vermont All of those schools would certainly have a fiber connection At this point when that is completed I mean it looks like the problems really are in deep in southern vermont between Bennington and Brattleboro can then weigh up in the northeast kingdom and island pond area Yes, that that that is accurate both in terms of access at the schools and by the larger population On this slide right here. You see that the heat map the darker the color the less the access Um, we've added the school of district boundaries onto that So the the areas of the state that are in the the worst shape in terms of students having access and the schools having access Are in the kingdom and in windham county Please center leads My understanding of the reason the CUDs were created was so that once the fiber was was run to the to the The municipalities of the centers of the population That they would keep pushing it out to the rural areas. Is that accurate? That is accurate except when it comes to the communication union districts. The unserved is their first priority They're doing the opposite is what a for-profit business would do where they build out to the densest easiest Most profitable areas first So the CUDs are created to reach Reach those other areas to reach those areas They likely will have to go through those denser areas, but just it's a little a little a little bit upside down there But that the focus is on who does not have the best connection now Can you hear me at all? Yes, yes, we can we can yeah, I want to make a point too about that hundred by hundred You know we use that we want to be careful that doesn't confuse people because hundred by hundred is probably not adequate either You know, you it really is about the technology Most schools, you know, I would say almost all the one gig You know gigabit fiber But we use that convention hundred by hundred fiber because that is the x71 definition But it really is a technology So but you're on the right track and I think rob your next slide shows the fiber connects the fiber coverage Yeah Just to build off about if you have a hundred by a hundred connection you have a gig by a gigabit connection available kind of But but here let me I'll go to the next slide here Rob, so I'm just thinking down in windham county Do those areas that are Very dark. Do they have CUDs? They do have a CUD the the value of CUD is covered Uh, Deerfield Valley is the or db fiber is the CUD down in that area. They have also started construction I believe they connected a few a few customers to work out their systems and I can't ref it stanford or Whitingham. I'm I apologize Okay, thank you Christine do you want to Do you want to take over? I'll show you you were doing great um So happy to help but don't want to No, that's fine. Um, so yeah, this is a slide. We're talking about The total addresses served, you know, this this gets the statewide addresses um, you know as we as uh rob introduced in the and the original One of the earlier slides, you know about making sure all the students have uh Have the covers they need Again, we're if it's this is really ties to if it's not fiber, it's not broadband Um, and you can see that 70 percent of our addresses are not served by fiber Which is why the legislature, you know, you know in your wisdom Set 100 by 100 is the goal and uh Within the cod boundaries is 22 2 percent of 8 percent outside But that outside the cod boundaries doesn't mean we're not addressing them Because we're many of those are being dressed um Through towns that are working with private telecom providers and rob, maybe you can add to that because you're more boots on the ground Yeah, I think it's it's great to note here that the the dark area You see fiber territory where the entire territory is being built out with fiber Regardless of the density of the area that they're serving the unserved First uh is where they're going so that's what we would expect the rest of the state to look like in a few years Yep And it's useful to know that in terms of addresses that are not in a cud That's only 28 of the addresses all of the other addresses that are not served by fiber are in a cud Okay Again to remind you of this funding model, you know, we're talking about connectivity But we also want to talk about affordability especially in these rural areas where the income the income stress is much higher Then you know the areas that are not served today. There's a much under a much Heavy heavier income stress That the areas that are served Which is why you know, we we talk about connectivity But we want to talk about affordability In the saying mouthful because it's it's important to we get as much grant funding as possible to drive down the monthly cost So so anyway, we we're we're kind of hitting the uh We want to make sure we kind of reviewed all this before in terms of the grant funding We want to make sure we hit Exactly what this committee asked for in terms of coverage And you know, we can actually take you You know rob can actually take you to the RGIS site To show you more detail if you like it's a question of where do you where do you want to go as a committee? Yeah, why don't you take us to the site just to kind of Show us around a little bit and we can always check things out on our own as well Yeah But I think christine for us is you know god forbid, you know another pandemic were to hit or covid numbers go up in two years You know, we just want to make sure as I know is the goal of everyone that schools and families have You know the access there is That were that things are moving along quickly and efficiently and it sounds like things are and in a couple of years This map will look very different That's correct. And with this site when you go to this site What's you can drill down right down to your address to see your coverage, which is So that that's so and then you can see the schools and their coverage So, you know, if you have any questions around, you know, if you get questions from your constituents Um, you know, of course, you can always forward those to us But if rob showing you, you know, I don't know if you could see that but you you get down He's got addison central school pulled up and you get you get um, you get the actual Broadband status of the school, you know, how many are the percentages served the percentage not served Um, I served 100 by 100 Which you can assume is 500 by 20 so you can see all that information So when you get questions for your constituents, you know, if you're if if you're so moved This site will give you all the answers from a broadband standpoint Yeah, and it shows for the school and also for the district in terms of residents in that district Right. Yeah, well said And then if we get a question about timing that we would likely forward to you To one of you and you might be able to you know, give them a better sense of the timing point. Okay Okay Does anybody have any questions about this? Yeah, please center room. So Are there any security concerns about um, this system? Me it going to be hat going to be shut down Uh, well, it's it's honest. It's on a state. Um, system so Right, you know it this even if it was shut down it wouldn't cause any damage Um, you know, this so it's a low risk site from a standpoint because Just just to clarify you're talking about the website that has this data or the internet access at the schools Oh, good question rub Oh, yeah, thank thank you. That's um, you know cyber security is that is a standard that is in our outside plant requirements As well as the federal requirements That's a concern that uh, we're ongoing we're We're staying up with the best of technology or in order to monitor A monitor attacks on on the On the infrastructure, but you know, it's an important question It's something that we we're doing due diligence on it's in the outs in our standards that we're in our it's on our grant requirements It's in the federal requirements You know, we are Going to be using the best technology said and part of the federal by the way To allay any fears that you may have if you've heard about technology like Huawei That's been banned Where this is uh, there's a domestic Uh, a domestic procurement requirement within these grants as well Senator Williams week says question. Yeah, just uh curiosity. So, uh, I understand the necessity of the program to get Century broadband out to the schools as soon as possible. I'm curious. So if there's if you've been commissioned to look at technology refreshment over time and what that cost is and feeding that back to legislature for long-range planning Oh, thank you. That's a really good question. First of all, I will say let's start with a base technology of fiber optic itself You know, uh fiber optic is Just to give you an example One fiber optic the size of a human hair Can carry 3 000 times the amount of data as cable We build this network with 144 minimum 144 fibers in the backbone So you got tremendous capacity for upside There's no known topology that beats the speed of light right now So, you know fiber optic in the electric utility business We were still using fiber from the 70s and it's got all you know, it's really You can continue to get increased densities with fiber by how you split the light So from from the base technology standpoint, it's good now Also related. I believe related to your question is what's the upgrade ability of the system? The uh networks are using what's called a g-pom network And g-pom networks are upgradable, you know, you make From 10 gig 200 gig Um, so ultimately These are all upgradable. You don't change the fiber. You change the electronics on each end Um, so as the demands increase This technology is continually upgradable Does that answer your question? Uh Yes, and yes, uh, I am curious so You know At five years 10 years down the road You know the the ability the technology to move more More through the same pipe You know that that it's so you know that there's an awareness Uh in the legislature about that this is not essentially one and done that that there is a That there's a that there is a a refreshment cost over time Yeah, I think the best way to describe that is just like at your house if you have a wi-fi router Occasionally you have to update it to be able to use all the speeds that the network is capable of bringing into the house That would be the same thing for for the schools But the network itself the amount of speed is limitless that it can provide and it's Going to be providing this for the next 30 to 40 years We like to say it's future proof and that's why we're focusing on this investment now It's a once in a lifetime opportunity. We have is the state. We want to build infrastructure That's going to last us through the lifetime Yeah, and the electronics by the way out of kind of a rule of thumb Is unique to electric Upgrade your electronics on the ends You know every 10 years and if you look at the Percentage of costs of the electronics versus the entire network, you know, it's probably about, you know, 5 or 10 percent But that's built into the business plans The business plans have that built into it and it's it's also, you know Yeah, yeah, it's easily it's I was going to get into federal depreciation stuff, but that's not necessary Thank you I'll end up on senator Williams question about security. So we follow this is every state basically follows some federal guidelines around cyber security Yes That we have to do certain things, okay, yeah curious, thank you Some of that cyber security is also on the end user as well in terms of setting up firewalls Uh, so it's it's kind of it's a shared responsibility the network operators taking on some of it But just like at home where You have uh anti virus software on your computer. It's the same thing whether it's a personal computer or a school network So there the responsibility is somewhat shared to be Yeah, but I think I think you ask a really important question here because you know I was I was a subject matter expert for the department of energy and cyber security from 2011 2013 so it's a little dated but I suspect things are still the same Most of the security breaches are caused by humans Not, you know, not following process. So, you know protocols in the schools are actually very important You know, if you think about You know, the sum of the big security risks that have happened They've become, you know, people bring them in on their usb disks and contaminate the system Typically it doesn't come through the firewalls of the school. So I I I think you've brought up a good issue And we will take that back in terms of Providing, you know, I think we have an obligation to provide advice to the schools on Best practices and cyber security from a human standpoint And we're somewhat related Do we have any I don't know if you hear the right folks to ask this but How do we make sure our students are protected from You know, people that want to do harm to them, you know, are there things that we as a state can make sure Require every school to have. I mean what happens, you know after school is Is one thing but while they're in our schools, how do we make sure as it relates to cyber You know stuff whether it's bullying a kid. I mean all sorts of things. How do we try to protect those kids? Yeah, I I think that's a great question. Um You know, I think that you're You're asking a very important question and we need to build that into our plans. We actually have a We've been funded by the we have a $518,000 grant to focus on digital equity and digital literacy We're working on digital building a plan for digital literacy trading Um, I think you should bring us back in next year and talk about what we're doing on that Yeah, that's how the meeting is incredibly important Yeah, when I first started working on the these issues I was I was in a small village and gone on that didn't have phone service until the year before now they had high speed internet and Helping helping the community understand what's appropriate online. What's not appropriate what to look out for That person who says they're going to get you a green card Probably isn't all of those types of things are more of a it's an education issue That should be within the classroom and within the community to to build that digital literacy Yep, and we've got and we've we've been assigned that task as well From uh, but and my thing is, you know, if a little kid though gets some text that says Meet me outside, you know, that's what I'm talking about. How do you make sure that stuff? You know, it doesn't happen and you know Center meets um, so It appears that uh, that the solution for the broadband access for schools is Almost entirely broadband fiber based For broadband I was just wondering if in the process of developing this system that if there was a need For an evaluation between fiber versus satellite access just curious if if that was part of the uh, the question at the time and and and if there was Any benefit, you know, again, maybe even this is outside of education, but uh, you know for the larger community of satellite was An option considered at any point Yes, actually, that's a point of value. In fact, I'm speaking to you over a bonded network that includes starlink Starlink is better than nothing, but it's inadequate for your long term needs. One of the things that You know, I won't there's a there's this You know, if you really get curious and you're you really want to get, you know, you can you can uh google shannon's shannon's rule for broadband What you're using Radio frequency to communicate these satellites is what they have to use There's limited bandwidth So a year, you know, I I've been running the satellite for 20 months 20 year 20 months right now When we started out, you know, I was getting 300 megabits down, you know, 100 megabits up Today it's 30 megabits down six megabits up because satellite faces the same challenges of all other technologies except for fiber So when I say that if it's not fiber, it's not broadband We've researched that thoroughly And there's tremendous agreement nationally within the straight broadband leaders network on this I also just want to add that this this was evaluated Over many many meetings and many many weeks when act 71 the legislation that created the vermont Yeah programs And this they came to the same conclusion that That when it comes to broadband it needs to be symmetrical fiber is the only thing that can do that at this point Because unlike the other technologies, it doesn't matter how many users are using it When you're on a wireless connection or dsl connection and it reaches capacity speed slow for everybody That's not what you're going to find with fiber so it was it was unanimous might think there was one vote against the In 2020 And you should know that now starlink has a data cap Yeah, and that's that's the other issue of some of these a lot of these technologies do have data caps So what if a student is participating in an online course and halfway through the month of of lessons They reach their data cap and can't access video anymore Yeah, so in order to protect students access and everybody's access the data caps are not acceptable and That the throughput that fiber allows is the only thing that can achieve that right now Okay, thank you Okay This whole quiz mr. Fish. Thank you both very much. This is this has been very helpful and appreciate the link the time and everything that you're doing Oh, you're welcome without thank you for all the work you're doing We definitely want to thank the legislation for well thought out legislation on this Yeah, thank you for having us and feel free to reach out to us personally at any time if you have questions about your district Or these issues in general Thank you, okay, and we're off