 Hello, this is the Education Committee of Vermont House of Representatives. This is the afternoon of January 21st, and we have Secretary Dan French in who's going to give us an update on some of the things that the agencies been thinking about in terms of education in the period of COVID-19 and some of the future thinking. So welcome, Secretary French. Yeah, good afternoon. It's my pleasure to be here. Jesse, do you have access to put the slides up or something? Certainly do. I have them right here just a moment. Thanks. Yeah, as I typically do, I created an outline, essentially a series of slides to guide our conversation. I think, you know, the impetus of this testimony was around the idea of learning loss, or for me, which sort of situates us talking about to the chair's point about the future, or trying to make, I would say, make sense of what's going on right now and then trying to anticipate what the next phases of the response and the emergency would be. And I use this phrase recovery from an emergency management standpoint. So, you know, like after the storm's over, we go into recovery. I'm not sure we'll ultimately settle on this. It's imperfect in some ways, but and part of what I'll share with you is that we're kind of on the cusp of this a bit. But there aren't many states that are ready to have this conversation. We are, as we continue to have done throughout the emergencies, reach out to our national partners to work in conjunction with others. So I think to a certain extent, because of our conditions being relatively positive, we've ended up in this position where we're thinking about this probably a little bit more than some of our other states. I think I mentioned previously, we started thinking about this in October, then had to stop thinking about it pretty quickly. And to just focus on safe operations through the holiday period because our conditions started to deteriorate pretty rapidly in New England. And that required we knew immediately that we wouldn't have capacity inside the system for anyone to think about these ideas, let alone to put some actual effort into the planning. I thought this would be a good way to talk about the idea of learning loss or kind of what that conversation provokes. And but it is designed to be a conversation. So I'll certainly share some information with you, but I'll be happy to take questions on the way as well. So, Jesse, if you want to go to the next slide. So I'll use the phrase recovery again from an emergency emergency management standpoint. You know, when the storms over so forth the last phase is sort of the recovery phase. We're not there yet. But I think it's important to acknowledge that there is recovery work that has to happen in education, you know, if that makes sense. It's this emergency certainly has been primarily a public health emergency, an unprecedented international global pandemic, if you will. But this emergency could create an education emergency if we're not careful. And we have we have some opportunity to mitigate that from actually happening to our kids. And that's that's essentially what this this concept is about is like what can we do to mitigate the impact of COVID-19, the public health emergency on our kids from an educational standpoint and use the phrase education here. And then broadly to include not only their academic success, but their social emotional well being their health, their nutrition. You think of all the different functions that schools serve. So that's that's really the task before us it's, you know, it's not to say we can prevent this emergency from having impacted our kids. The phrase mitigation I think is an important one it's like we're going to do our best to reduce the impact as best we can, knowing that in spite of our best efforts some kids are going to be more definitely affected than others. And I'll also, you know, say that the focus here is on the impact of kids but there's a whole bunch of other, you know, systems the adults that work in the systems and the systems themselves that have been really put through a challenging time period. But I think what will emerge for a focus ever recoveries on the students because that's what brings us all together and is provides us some motivation to carry on in spite of the challenges. So if we go to the next slide Jesse. So I think, you know, in terms of the idea of learning loss the first thing I'd say about that phrase is it's probably inadequate, you know, and I was on a national call this week and I think there's, you know, say somewhat consensus it's it's convenient to use the phrase learning loss to think of education perhaps as a commodity, you know, X number of hours of services have not been provided therefore, how do we make up the difference. I find pretty quickly that that phrase is inadequate to describe the emergency in education. It's important to acknowledge that the impact the emergencies can affect different kids differently, you know, so it's not, it's not like all kids, you know, here's here's the beginning of why learning loss is inadequate, not all kids are going to be adversely affected. The same way or in the all the same academic areas. If you take elementary for example where you know much of the learning is foundational to future learning whereas high school you're talking oftentimes about content. Those two things are not necessarily the same from a perspective of learning loss. It's important to acknowledge that different schools will have different experiences so it's not a case where we could even then say, well, K through three has this sort of experience because in some districts we might find that K through three is not the priority it could be other grade levels so you know that this point would be that we have to we at some point we have to go in and assess what's happened and that's sort of the first phase of recovery is to go in and sort of do that triage or that assessment of what what the impact has been. I think it's fair to say that students that were at risk, more at risk before or probably even greater risk now. So students that have had support systems in place family support would have you to get through this emergency those students that didn't have those support systems that we required essentially schools to provide that essential support in their lives. They've probably been at more at risk now than they were before. Certainly, you're all familiar this idea that across our state and across the regions in Vermont. You know, there's uneven capacity to begin this work as well so that needs to be acknowledged in our planning. And we expect there's going to be a need to coordinate state services probably like we've never had to do before so. Mental health is the obvious one use services DCF and so forth. There are other resources that are going to need to be brought to bear. And part of our challenge is going to be to ensure that all all areas of the state are being supported in that regard. And certainly, one area that's fairly optimistic right now is the funding, you know that there's going to be funding necessary so our funding paradigm previously was about reopening school which was about PPE disinfection masks. You know, so forth and so on. We have to sort of reprioritize our thinking around funding now to think about the recovery services kids are going to need the tutorial, the additional social emotional support the activities. You know, we haven't done music in months, you know, all those, all those kinds of things are going to have to be focused in a way that allows us to do some prioritization and allocator funding, according. Right now I'm fairly optimistic about the funding we've received pretty generous allocation under the ESSER program recently and we expect there to be a yet another federal allocation or funding coming up. So, we go to the next slide. So, what we've been engaged in almost parallel to what we did are comparable to what we did for reopening schools we want to anticipate going through a recovery planning process. And this is kind of where we are right now we're starting having these initial conversations with stakeholder groups to develop what I call a template you know like what are what are the themes which I'll go over in a minute. And then to really sort of take take that conceptualization that template out and test it a little bit into the practical world of implementation. You know this I think I mentioned last time one of the back to our summer work. We only have a finite amount of time to do the planning at some point we also have to carve out time for implementation which is, since we're doing this in a very iterative basis, there's no experience that we use as a guide here we have to sort of create a path forward. It's important that we kind of take a conceptual idea and try it on a little bit in the sort of to flesh out what I call planning process. Through the month of February we sort of draft out what would ultimately become a planning process and then move through the month of March actually required then districts to go through that process at the local level and produce a plan. And then certainly along the way to make sure. That we become the prior the prevalent paradigm of our work organizationally. But we have other activities going on at the same time, particularly around the use of federal dollars that you know the regular title funds and so forth that require continuous improvement planning. So we want to make sure whatever we're doing in this domain is integrated with other things so it's not added on as another layer. As I mentioned, my suspicion is this will become the prevalent construct if we set this up appropriately. Next slide, Jesse. So these are the domains we're working with right now and they're not hierarchical they're sort of they're all an equal footing. These might change a bit. But this is based on conversations with you know we have our leaf not daily conversation with school districts based on our conversation with other state agencies and what we're seeing nationally on research and so forth. So we see three major themes emerging our domains, mental health and well being the re engagement we sort of we started with the truancy concept and run to expand that out to be sort of this broader category of engagement. We know there's, there's some students that have not been engaged directly as much as others and this is going to be a real challenge for us and and truancy is too simplistic and probably inadequate to address the issues. And then of course, academic success and achievement. So you want to go to the next slide. So, in terms of the Vermont context. It was important for us to think about, you know, how we, how do we go about doing this and so much of where we are historically is about creating stronger school systems, you know it's that's our essential theory of action I would argue an act 46. You know, for example an act 46 the idea was to put one school board in charge of multiple elementary schools. You know the classic examples I travel around the state would be. You have one school board for each elementary school one school board for the middle school and high school. And, you know, there's certainly that creates issues around coordination but more often and not in terms of equity. The elementary schools look totally different than other elementary schools and I've been in supervisory units in our state where you would think the elementary schools that fed into the same high school or in different countries, you know based on the resources that are available to them. So the theory and act 46 was to put one board and to charge that to say okay, we have to acknowledge that these are all our kids, you know, how do we address that locally and start to put that sort of systems. So the districts think of the kids as being all their kids not just when they arrive at high school and go, how come these kids can't learn because they're from that town, you know, and we hear a lot of that. So, also with 173, you know, I think the whole theory of action 173 to, you know, to give districts flexibility certainly to address the disincentive that you know that existed I think as a result of the block grant, but also to put districts from a systems perspective to intervene with students, not necessarily say before special education but to sort of buoy up the whole system and put that once again in the systems perspective so it's not just one school here and one school there. I think another variable here, which is all important is emerge probably before act 46. Even that going back to act 153 is the issue of staff availability in the demographic challenges we're going to face as a state, because the staff staffing shortages issues are not just about enrollment or in other professions are also going to manifest themselves in terms of education here. The other sort of rationale I think for strong school systems is it sort of it's an element that we can help control for staff turnover. So, so much of our systems that we do have going in the state that in many cases our state of the art some of the best in the world, in terms of educational practice are highly predicated on individual leaders individual teachers. In terms of turnover and staff, those systems are back to in some cases back to square one. And we still have a turnover, particularly the role of principles are critical in terms of instructional leadership we still have a turnover rate and principle somewhere around 20, 20%. So, it's really hard to think about, you know, doing systems level work with your leadership is turning over on a 20% basis. You just can't can't make headway in that regard so once again, the idea of building systems that no matter who the leader is they come in there's something there for them to work with there's a broader support framework for principles as they do that work. And when we were looking about sort of the systems perspective we can look at for basically called levers that exist in regulation. And these are only the goodies I call them you know these have been around. These are sort of symptomatic of what Vermont education was about pre no child left behind act you know, if you remember Mark Hall when he was commissioner. And then this is what Vermont decided these four things are decided what Vermont decided to be sort of the cornerstone of effective school districts, you know, got to have an educational support team for all students. You got to have a local assessment plan, you know, in this disposition of taking data and making sense of it as a staff need to coordinate your curriculum, and you need to have a needs based professional development plan so these elements have been around for a while. No child left behind act somewhere around 2000 you know goals 2000 it sort of put all this on the back burner as a state we got into the adequate yearly progress. But we're finding, you know, sort of amount of comfort and going back and look at these essential elements, because they're not all equally well articulated across the state, particularly when we start thinking about act 46. In the old days we talked about educational support teams being at the school level not necessarily being at the district level, and that'll be one of the things we emphasize as part of a recovery for a number of reasons. If you want to go to the next slide Jesse. So, in terms of, you know, contemplating you know, thinking about those four levers and then contemplating how we would go forward and recovery. We think there's going to be back to this idea of assessment or triage we need to understand where districts are at in this work. So to what extent do they have a coordinated curriculum already to what extent they do have an EST. One of the first pieces of feedback we heard when we put out our sort of draft template of those domains is someone said something like 30% of our districts are ready to do this work. We're thinking about it in the other 30. Don't know what you're talking about, you know, so it's, it's that sort of the classic I think Vermont dichotomy is we have districts that excel at the systems level work we have some that are sort of in the middle then we have some that really struggle. So we need to we need to figure that out. And to have some sympathy or attention to the regional variations in the delivery models that you know just because it looks this way in this county doesn't mean that's how it looks needs to look in this county. And having regular conversations with the Department of Mental Health. We know, you know, for example, the Northeast Kingdom is in a different organizational place right now due to organizational change that's happening in Northeast Kingdom human services. So the recovery planning that we do in the kingdom is going to have to be sensitive and responsive to the fact that they're that mental health organization that human service organizations in a different place than others that are well established they've had a tremendous turn over. And this is a huge opportunity for them to kind of reorient their system in partnership with their school districts. So, in terms of how we get started with us we were, you know, back to those four levers one of them is the educational support team. We think the good starting point is to get that situated at the district level at each school district when I say school district these are like supervisory and level structures you know. And once again EST was often done at the school level. But we're thinking, you know, our experience really on the surveillance testing that it's really useful from when the state comes in to have one entity at each district that we can interface with and then the district then interfaces with its member schools. So particularly in this case where we have to do some triage and we need to understand what's going on in a broader region not just based on a school basis. But also points to using the school district as the entity to collect some data, you know, through an EST process to say okay, what's going on in our system. You know, where is it the elementary students is at the middle level students what are those priorities relative to those domains and point point the district to be responsive to its own context. So what we're going to do is we're going to be bringing other state services and so we want to have an efficient way for state entities to counter interface with with the school district so that's here to again the EST, almost like an act to 64 team meeting if you're familiar with that, you know, the idea that we would bring other people at that table to talk about what they're seeing in terms of student needs. And by leveraging the school district, we start to get a footprint out into the region as well because school districts, the supervised readings are generally regional entities on a fairly large scale. I'm sorry, could you hold one second. Secretary of French representative Brady, did you have a question. Yeah, I was just hoping you could explain again the EST at the district level like who would be on who would be on that. Yeah, this is, thank you. Except we have to flesh out as part of the planning process. But right now we'd like to see an EST coordinator established in a district at the school supervisory level. I think your district has such an entity that sort of looks across student supports in a more general way. But for many school districts, this is a hat someone's wearing, you know, in the smaller elementary schools is the principal or the guidance counselor school counselor, many cases school counselors are shared across multiple elementary schools. So it doesn't really have a good home. It's in once again there's turnover so you might have a good home for a couple years and then it sort of falls apart again. So we, I think we want to reenergize the concept of an EST, make it a little more systematic. Also see if we can work a system towards having coherence on a referral process. So, you know, how do you how do you, how do you bring students before that entity. So at a district level, really to have a coordinator have some administrative time someone who's holding the data and making sure that process is running well. And certainly it's not to preclude holding ESTs at the school level because I think some of that definitely will still need to happen. But particularly from a back again from a triage perspective we're getting we're recovering from this emergency we're not really sure what we're going to find. We need to have something sort of generally staffed to provide some consistency and an efficient point of intersect for other state services and funding. I wanted to clarify back to 64 is the 1988 law that that connected the designated agencies, mental health agencies with the schools. Yeah, it's a very secretary I've been to those sort of annual meetings it's always been a very useful process in Vermont to bring that sort of integration. But here too I mean it plays out differently in different parts of the state and when I was working in the Manchester area, my principles were say unfamiliar, but they didn't use to 64 often you know they didn't see it regularly happen. And on the other hand you know arguably one of the most remote areas of the state. We had difficulty getting state level services deployed into our location. So one way we got into that was to have a regular to 64 meeting once a month, you know so it was on our calendar everyone came to that including the police and so forth and we staffed cases on a regular basis that way so just it plays out differently but it can be a very useful structure. Okay, we'll go to the next slide. So, you know, the role of the state I think we have a significant role to support districts in this work once again we're going to have districts in different situations and in the regions of our state have different resources relative to state agencies and so forth and the configurations are different. So we're engaging in a couple activities I just thought I'd share with you one is we're going to be putting out a statewide contract on data literacy so this is we're just about to ink the contract on this now with West Ed, you know the sort of preeminent authority and how to do this so we'll be working with districts to provide them direct support on how to look at their data make sense of their data. This will be critical. As we get into sort of the triage again or assessment of the impact of the emergency. A piece that we picked out of 173 largely do some observations of the DMG group I think you had made on earlier. Some of the work he's observed around districts needs some help on scheduling the resources resources in this case meeting personnel, how to deploy folks the actual schedule drive so much of what we do in the process. So we went out to bid on a tool to help districts do that with some professional development supports we're about to sign that contract now as well. Internal to the AOE we currently staff support teams reach school district largely around the continuous improving improvement paradigm around the title grants if you will. We'll now sort of reconfigure that to support the districts in a recovery process so once again we don't want them engaging in multiple planning processes we can sort of bring these things together. But that's predicated to a certain extent on the agency reconfiguring its support as well. And to agency staff doing this we expect to bring in other agencies as well sort of staffing districts with a team from state government folks so that we can really provide consistent support across the state regardless of the region that they're located in. Let me just check represent the Brady did you have another. Another question. And then lastly to this point about identifying where districts are in terms of their developmental need and then bringing like group districts together to work on problems of practice so if there are districts that need more help in local assessment planning. We would like to work on that we would be the convening authority of the agency to help them do that and bring additional expertise to bear. I think that's the end of my presentation. Thank you very much. We have a few minutes here for questions I just I just want to start with the fact that we've had a presentation from Nate Levinson today. We have heard from Tammy Colby today. And all three of you are aligned in in a few things. One is the need for system wide. No. Everybody's talking about system wide. So here in the need for regional thinking in terms of the ability to use resources. At the same time, we have school districts that are trying to separate from a larger picture, which is a challenge going forward. And then Levinson talked about his his five areas being the need for core instruction, which brings up the question of where we are with MTSS. And then time outside of core, highly skilled professionals and system wide. And Tammy Colby, I don't know my list one for her but she has some similar similar thoughts. MTSS is our system that is supposed to be helping differentiate instruction. And yet we're hearing that there are some as you said there's sort of the 3030, you know, 333333 in there of those that are flyers those are working and those that really are far behind. With MTSS. Do we is there any oversight or checking in to see how districts are doing at a wider level. Yeah, it's it's really so much of. I appreciate Nate and Tammy's observations. And it reminds me yesterday we had a state board meeting, you know, and I think we're pretty good at making the observations in the state and one of the big ones is somewhere in the middle here, I'll call it quality assurance quality control somewhere between regulation and requiring people to do things and, and the policy design itself which in many cases of Vermont is very good. We're not as strong, you know, it's like, so how do we, we see at the agency, for example, one of our essential functions is oversight which is sort of the regulation but it's also support. And how do you transition from support to oversight and what does that look like on a graduated basis. In many cases we go from zero to 60 it's like, you know, either you're doing this and then you're in the regulation, you know, penalty area but how do you kind of work through that So I think in terms of MTSS I could show you tons of stuff on our website you know we have the planning tools been you know this stuff's been well established in Vermont for over 20 years and MTSS I think I could trace back even farther, some sort of pyramid of intervention kind of concept. So I think you know looking at 173 in particular MTSS emerges pretty quickly as sort of the way to conceptualize our way into, you know, living inside a block grant. But I think here to EST I could have put MTSS in the substitute for EST because they're the same thing essentially from my perception you know we're going to, we want people to think about MTSS or EST from a district level, not just on a school level. And that's that sort of triage idea that we're going to be sort of figuring out which kids need which supports, you know, more urgently than others is I think the difference and, you know with an emergency we're going to see some of that you know it's just like with a vaccine deployment we only have X number of doses what are we going to do first. So we're going to have to do some of that triage. I think the trick for us is going to be, and I think us as a state is to leverage the recovery experience to make our system stronger so by the end of recovery. We'd like to see MTSS well well established as from a systems perspective, and to make sure districts have the quality assurance and the quality support that they, they need to sustain that over time. So it's a good question. I could point you to some tools, but you know that on the other hand, we've been at this for 20 some odd years and it's in my own experience some years you see it well established and once again a principal leaves or whoever leaves and then you're back to ground one trying to experience, you know, the system in tears. Which which does get to the question of capacity at the age of capacity at the agency of education as we're looking at some of the things that where we're looking more systems wide district ride region wide. And yet the capacity at the agency through no fault of the agency's own. Partially as a result of the legislature in 2007. When you come in to present the budget that you have. I think there's going to be a keen interest and better understanding where you are in terms of personnel capacity, and where we are in terms of federal funds and state funds and I know sometimes you're using state funds simply to, to be able to tap into federal funds. Yeah, I look forward to those conversations. I, you know, honestly I feel pretty good about even some of this work. I think we're, I put up a red flag right now that's emerging literally on a daily basis. We have a new program inside of Essar to if you're familiar with Essar the elementary secondary education relief funds. The government in this new allocation carved out a separate program for independent schools. Previously, their strategy for independent schools was under S or one wasn't included in this idea of equitable shares. So we didn't we didn't have any direct administration oversight essentially of those I mean that was something districts had to engage in with the independent schools in the region. So here S or two, they've created a whole stand up program. And this is causing quite a bit of concern at a call with my colleagues in New England this morning we're all equally concerned we've never done anything like this where basically we're going to be standing up new programs for independent schools and monitoring their expenditures to ensure compliance with the federal law. It's going to be new for them as well they're you know the definition of independent is they don't often go through sort of that programmatic oversight so it's going to be very challenging and we've managed to, you know, keep our head above water during the emergency particularly, you know, S or CRF all these federal programs require us to stand up applications monitor them and provide fiscal oversight. We've been managing to do that but this this new program and S or two is going to be very challenging and they didn't give us a lot of money and administrative set aside to take care of it, you know, so we're going to we're going to have to figure that out. There are different independent schools have different oversight. There's a lot of them. Yeah, you know, so like with districts part of our, you know, to your point about staffing. We become more efficient if we focus on working with 60 entities as opposed to 294 with the independence we suddenly take on 200 new entities, you know, because each one, none of them are affiliated with a district. You know, we have to deal with them on a one off basis, if they want to take the money. They don't even need the money. And there are funds that are available to you for one time additional personnel. Yes, I don't think they're going to be sufficient none of my colleagues think they're sufficient for the scale of this program. You know, but anyway I just put that out there and I'll talk more about it in detail. And there's also the possibility that some of those things could be changed with the new Congress. Yes, I mean that's kind of where we are with us or to right now I was just telling the superintendents I'm sort of in a two week holding period on several different issues with the federal government because we're waiting for the Biden administration to sort of bring its regulatory perspective to bear on some of these programs. I see Megan Roy has joined us. I'm not seeing any hands. Thank you. Did your last point there's a little troubling that all of a sudden you're going to have to devote resources and public school as their funds to this program. And I assume without any books being opened to see if any of these schools actually need the money. These schools ran surpluses last year with taxpayer dollars. Anyway, I'll get off that soapbox. I just one point real quick these aren't public school dollars I mean these are they've in fairness to Congress they've allocated separate funds for the non public school program. So it's it's not it doesn't one of the solutions they created was it doesn't put the dollars in a competitive process like it was previously. So in fairness to that these are dedicated funds for non public schools. Right. If it's not enough to administrate. Where's the. Yeah, it's as you can you know the idea of working with 60 entities that are used to the bureaucratic oversight versus going to 200 that aren't ready to do that. And we're not ready to do that. And every every chief I talked to you so far in the New England states and a few nationally I have the same concerns. We're not quite sure how to administer these programs or have the capacity to do so. And these have to go great. Sorry. These are all approved school independent schools. Yeah, that's correct. I mean I don't think the federal law anticipates for months arcane governance structure so we, you know they call it non non public schools. It includes religious schools. But once again in the concept of emergency relief we do need to put federal resources towards the schools they need the money. I would also point out one distinction is under the payroll the PPE, PPP program under under this new S or two program or it's actually under the gear program. The schools that take PPP cannot also take the, the gear to funding funding is the funding that was the governor. That's correct. That's where they put this independent school program under the gear, gear to. Thank you. Serita last question I think, and we'll move on to. And I can run. I just want to say I share chair webs concerns. So it's a dead on that. I guess I'm just wondering are you saying that close to 30% of Vermont schools are not implementing the MTSS system. Yeah, I would know I would think it's fair to say I mean we use I've heard that for sort of, we should say as the chair correctly said 33 33 33 better analogy. But I think it's, it's fair to say, from an organizational systems perspective. There's always 33 of our school districts as systems that really are operating on all cylinders. You know they have changes in leadership less frequently perhaps but when they do they're able to sustain and move. They, they look at something like Essar as an opportunity to leverage their strategic planning and they're ready, you know they're already thinking about how they're going to do these things. We have another third that are in a good position with some help to do that you know they'll they'll ask for more technical assistance and, and so forth that they can pull it together. And then we have another third that don't answer the phone, you know, when, when, when when the phone call goes out and really without direct support from the state would struggle. And it's more often and not have devolved into a system where each school is sort of on its own trying to do things. So it's, it's more a characterization of to what extent the schools within the system function as a system. And you I believe do have some language coming to us on some of the things that you're looking to implement this year is that what I understand your work. Yes, we've, we've produced some policy ideas as a part of our coven response that are pretty much in sync with this I think you know, I'll just call out literacy reform I know representative awesome when I was here last expressed interest in that we have interest in that as well. We see it situated in this construct of recovery. We see as an activity that folks should engage in as part of that sort of triage assessment, particularly the students in the younger grades. We also once again want to I think leverage the recovery work to the greatest extent possible to put school districts on good footing after the after the emergency is over to be stronger school systems that would be our goal. I just remembered representative Williams you had a question about capacity as well in terms of teachers. Did you want to ask about that. Yes they. In my opinion have a plan coming forward. The concern that I have and many have are the positions, the people to fill those positions. Where are they going to come from. Yeah, I know it's it's a, as I mentioned a significant concern that I think arguably we haven't spent enough time talking about as a state, do our demographics, what we call in the profession the pipeline development. You know, so we, we are the second oldest state in the country behind main. We've had declining enrollments, but now that manifests itself and labor shortages across the board, you know as I've said to this committee on a couple occasions when I go visit a school. Most schools today have the same sign in front of them which is bus drivers needed. You know so there's there's shortage of staff across the board. And so we're working in the ideas of pipeline meaning so where do we get our new teachers from, you know we have the prospect of state colleges are primary feeder system consolidating or eliminating programs. We have pretty complex regulatory environment for new teachers moving in from out of state, you know we don't necessarily have automatic reciprocity it's something we're working on with other states. We have a good look at those systems to say you know if we're going to rely on half of our new teachers coming from out of state what are we going to you know what are we going to do about that. But we're going to have to really really start to address those pipeline issues I've observed sort of anecdotally that will probably see more schools close in the future not due to lack of students but lack of teachers to do the work. What about growing those teachers within our state building a solid program for that. Yeah, and that's, you know, honestly a demographic. I see often. I know you're up in the kingdom. You know as I mentioned I was in Canaan when I'm in rural areas I tend to see more locals returning to teach in their building so I think you know I don't have the firm percentages on that but in the rural areas we tend to see more local people in rural communities to work where the demographics and let's say the more urban areas in Vermont generally have teachers coming from other places. Okay. Yeah, we do have to learn to grow our own. Could you tell me just another just, I can't remember if you have a 173 update report for us or not and I can't remember if that's do this something to do this year or not. I think we can speak to the committee provides an update on its work. I'm not sure to what extent the agency provides an update I'll have I don't remember if that's one of our reports but we will provide that update if it's. I think there was in 2018 but I think that was related to professional development. Yeah, I don't I don't remember a formal reporting requirement I know the advisory group has a formal reporting requirement. I don't know if it's reported we'll certainly speak about it when they give their update on the rule process. Okay, well I thank you very much. Good to see you. We're going to move over to Megan Roy Megan I'm so happy to see you I want to just introduce the members of our committee so you'll know who we are. I'm going to go to just our new folks. I've lost a few and we've gained a few and it's, it's lovely to have them. So, of our new folks why don't we start with representative Williams. Hi, I'm Terry Williams. I live in Granby. I represented the Northeast Kingdom. I own the towns of Concord, Granby, Victory, Maidstone, Mooneburg, Brunswick, Hildhaw. I have been in the administrative side of the schools in Concord. I've been a coach, an athletic director, and I owned a store where a lot of these kids ended up working. Thank you representative Harrison. Good afternoon, representative Harrison first year legislator representing Wethersfield and Cavadish. Representative Brown. Thank you. Good. Good afternoon. I am Jana Brown. Also a new newly elected legislator serving the town of Richmond Vermont in my year round job is with a literacy nonprofit that works across Vermont, New Hampshire. And representative Brady. Hello, I know Megan well from CVSD so I'll leave it at that and I'm going to have to jump off for a few minutes to pick up a kiddo from CVSD and then I'll be back on things. Thank you. And Jesse, can you just say hello so you'll know who you're talking to. Hi, Megan. Nice to have you with you. I mean you can be assisted for us education session. Great. We've appreciated having having just joined us so welcome Megan. Megan, you are the chair of the sense of space funding group that was that originated out of back 173. We have heard today from Nate Levinson. We have heard from Tammy Colby in relation to the development of 173, not the waiting study. And we also had our Ledge Council Jim Demeray, talk to us about some of the features in at 173. So you, I think today are providing us with an update as to where you are when 173 is that correct. Well, I can certainly do that. I think I had tailored this a little bit more specifically to COVID recovery. And I did want to make clear to the committee that I will draw connections between what I'm sharing and the conversations of the advisory group but the advisory group hasn't specifically taken up the issue of COVID recovery. And so I just want to make sure you're aware of that. And but go back to a question that you were asking Secretary French Kate. And I see that Ted Fisher is on here but the advisory group did submit their report to the General Assembly. I don't want to put Ted on the spot but I think it came via the agency but that was submitted before the 15th of January. And I am happy to answer. Does that sound familiar? Is it something that you've seen? It does sound familiar. I don't think it hasn't come to the committee yet but why don't you, Megan, your experience is so rich. I'm just just talk to us. It sounds great. And like I said, I came, I'll start with a COVID recovery piece although it is very connected to Act 173 MTSS and existing structures which sounds just from the tail end of what I heard Secretary French talking about sounds like in alignment with what you've probably heard from others today. So, you know, I think what I wanted to share about COVID recovery in Vermont and how we address that is, we all know that COVID-19 has had a lasting impact on students on families, and it will for the foreseeable future. And I think that we have to keep two things in mind as we react to and plan for COVID recovery. First, we need to make sure that we're making decisions based on data and not just global either assumptions or kind of what we hear in the ether around what's needed. And then second, and this is particularly important to the advisory group, we need to be building and expanding existing structures. The pathway to recovery is on the structure of a multi-tiered system of support, which is what Act 173 desires to bring forward, along with flexibility of funding and lots of other things. And, you know, I will share a few thoughts specific to any one-time funding that might be available to schools and how they can use that in a way that moves forward existing structures so that we're not sort of, you know, receiving a one-time benefit of money that doesn't help us in the long term. So in terms of that first piece, the kind of basing our actions on data, I do think we need to reframe the concept of recovery a little bit. If you listen to the national narrative about the impact of the pandemic, and I hope this isn't interpreted to be taking the pandemic lightly because I don't mean to do that. But when we talk about educational recovery and we talk about the impact, it's all in very global terms that all students have been impacted. And that's true. And in some ways that gives us a sense of urgency to react and respond that we need. But there is a risk to the idea of thinking that every single student is impacted and therefore need something because if we have that assumption and we are in receipt of funding or support or resources, and we try to spread those resources across all of our students, we're going to water down and potentially take things away from the kids who need it most. Most districts are engaged in collecting kind of interim data about how their students are doing. And for many students, they're certainly impacted. They had lost learning opportunities, but they're still where they should be by and large. So we need to be careful that when we use funding that we need to laser focus, not just funding but our efforts on the kids that are impacted. Students who are historically marginalized students with disabilities students who are struggling before the pandemic students who were unable to access remote instruction or even hybrid instruction that's happening right now. And, and I think that it also allows us to make sure that we reflect on what school systems did do during the pandemic. There are some shifts to remote instruction that benefited systems that benefited schools and some of those things can be built upon. So I would just caution us to make sure that we take it down from a very global conversation to a really specific one. And so that really requires that we identify and support those students most impacted. So districts that have multi-tiered systems of support will have a component of their structure that collects data, common assessment data, local common assessment data, and analyzes it and identifies very quickly the kids who need help. The districts who have those structures are already doing that right now. They're looking at whether kids have lost ground and basic skills. They're looking at the proficiency gap and whether or not it's growing and for who and in what areas. So districts need to be able to examine that assessment data so that they can react. They need to be able to disaggregate that and look really closely at the indicators of learning loss. I think when people hear data, they often think of national data like SBAC. I think school districts are going to need support in using local assessment data over the next at least short period of time because for one thing SBAC wasn't implemented last year. If it's impacted, if it's implemented this year, the validity needs to be examined because of we're going to have lots of kids who don't take it, things like that. So we need to be really supportive of schools having the right data to be able to channel their support. And the other piece in terms of supporting the right population and I'm sure you've heard this before, but we do need to keep mental health and social emotional learning in mind. It's not just academic areas that are impacted, especially for marginalized students and families. So when we think about measuring COVID impact, we also need to measure non-academic structures. And you know, I think the theme there is, you know, bringing this back to Act 173. And I think Secretary of Friends was talking about variability. The districts that have these structures in place or at least are familiar with the structures, they're going to be able to do this and the schools that don't are going to have to target their resources and help to those structures. And I think we need to be thoughtful about that. Or else we risk kind of throwing something on the fire and not having it actually put it out. So shifting a little bit to if we think about recovery, and I talked to my comments that you can read about one time funding. And I sort of mean that just so your committee is aware of thoughts if you are thinking about one time funds, but these are also applicable to existing funding streams that school districts have. And school districts still need support in figuring out how to spend the money already available to them in a way that's more flexible. So we already sort of talked above about targeting funding on the most impacted students. You know, in years past, sometimes when funding is available, it's made available to all families and families can say, well, I'm going to access some outside tutoring for my child. So that's one of those things that families who need that the most may not be able to navigate the process to get it. And you're kind of spreading the funding really thin. The thing specific that I think are in alignment with what Secretary French said is we really need to build upon current school improvement structures. All districts are required to create a continuous improvement plan. Districts who are receiving equity support have to submit a plan for that. So these are already part of our structures and rather than adding a layer of so you need your continuous improvement plan and you need a coven recovery plan. Those two things should be merged together. We need to focus on enhancing existing structures. I think that would be the biggest takeaway of the conversation and MTSS is the structure that is exactly how we will find the kids who are struggling. Figure out what they need and bring it to them if we and that sounds very simplistic, but that's what a multi tiered system of support is. And with an eye toward things that will benefit Act 173 implementation in the long run. If districts are using one time funding. How can that funding be used to also build capacity at the same time it's reaching kids directly. Some of those options could be expanded intervention programming over the summer. And that programming could be tailored so that it is being received by kids, but also providing professional development to teachers so that's called a lab school model but teachers are coming. They're teaching kids but they're being taught themselves while they do it so one time funds could be used for that. We need a short term coaching position so that we can infuse support to districts to help them analyze their structures, figure out what professional development is needed. And, you know, you were just talking about early literacy professional development for first instruction I mean that was the conversation in the last year session about raising the ability of classroom teachers in Vermont to be able to teach the students of our kids. And when we do that at the first instruction level, it will reduce the number of kids who need help, and therefore the help can become more expert and more targeted. So, again, Kate, I, that those are my thoughts specific to recovery. I'm happy to make a stronger connection to 173 or answer other more general questions, whatever you need. I'm going to move out to the group representative Austin. Nicky, can you just talk a little bit more about the professional development first instruction level I haven't heard that used before so just. We know, we know that we need to raise the expertise of our teachers, and the best kind of professional development is the kind where you receive some instruction, and then you practice it and then you have someone come in and watch do it, and and that's really hard to replicate in a classroom, but you can create a laboratory classroom where the coach is built into the structure of the program and a summer intervention program kind of lends itself to that so a teacher. And I'm making this up a little bit but a teacher could be teaching a four week program that has a coach embedded in it. So the students in the program are receiving really intensive high quality intervention, but the teachers always also receiving first instruction and you know we already have in lots of schools around the state deep professional development happening in early literacy and structured literacy. So, so literacy is the first place that my, that my brain would go in terms of the topic but you could certainly replicate that for math or other areas. So first instruction isn't the elementary grades like it doesn't work at the elementary guys. Thank you that's my know that's a good jargon bus by first instruction I mean classroom teachers. The, the, the general ed setting as opposed to intervention. Okay, thank you so much. Yeah, yep. Okay representative common. This may be a tie to 173. And our speakers this morning talked about the need to have flexible funding that could be, you know, sort of targeted to be most effective. And I'm just trying to remember I could have brought up Jim's timeline, but at what point does the what does 173 allow schools to use their, their special ed funding in flexible ways. Yep. Yeah, it's fiscal year 23. So the 2223 school year which means the budget that we build next year build for a new special ed funding. So, so that does not appear soon enough to deal with sort of the immediate problems. Could you talk a little bit about the flexibility as far as you know that is going to be available with some of the federal funds that are coming per CRM or answer. Yep. Yeah, and it's that's a good observation because what that means is we have at least for next year, the remainder of this year and next year we have to work within our existing funding structures to do this coven recovery, which school districts need help to maximize at least the flexibility that we have now. I'm sure you've heard, I'm sure Dr Colby talks about it but so have others there are ways to use some grant funding that we have now in a more flexible way. So I, so one solution is helping schools really quickly figure out how to use that more flexibly with the one time funds coming in the at least the funding we've received so far. You know, two pots of money, one had to be very specifically tied to new expenses, teachers masks, PP, right, like, but then the second part of funding actually was used very similarly to how our title grants and other consolidated federal program grant. So schools are pretty familiar with how to deploy those funds, but they will need some help from the agency with how to do that flexibly. So it is possible it is possible to use that funding in this way, but some schools are going to need some help. What is your recommendation on the role of the legislature do you have a role that you would see that would where we could be most helpful, and where we could be most unhelpful. Well, so having both have been in both categories. I'm going to take for this to sound like the drama of don't do anything, because I'm sure you read that line in the report. But I think it, I think it is important, especially now. You know, I think the things that I've shared suggests that the, the laws already exist right now within which we can recover and act 173 is the most specific one. We don't have the structure on which to do what we need to do to recover from COVID. So one piece of advice would be to let that happen to let act 173 continue its transition or our transition to that funding model. We do need that flexibility and funding. So the question of further delay or whether or not we should even change our funding structure does come up periodically. I think we need to stick with it. I think I think we need to stick with the structure of 173 because the intent of that legislation is part of what will help us out of that. What made 173 work was were the recommendations of DMG and Nate Levinson, and there was supposed to be professional development coming statewide but that much of that did not happen. What do you see as needed in that area I know we do have a bill coming forward related to literacy, which we're hoping, hoping well will help. And H101 now I think I haven't actually looked at it, but Serena, it's a lot of it is our bill from last year, but I believe she's tied it to COVID. Yeah. Okay. You know, I think what's needed in terms of professional development is really concrete ways schools can figure out where they are relative to MTSS. Find their own, it's a little bit like schools need their own intervention. We need to figure out where they are, find out what they need and provide it and it's that sort of systematic plan. And again, I was here for part of Secretary French's piece where he said, we have all the material, we have the outline. The agency has given a framework for responding to 173 that couches each of the pieces he talked about ESD. So the staff exists, it's helping schools know where to start. So it's coaching, it's having someone come into your system, who can help you figure out where you are some districts already know where they are and they're going to go directly to maybe a piece of a DMG foundation. They're going to say, my, our issue is that we need more time for kids to receive intervention so they don't get pulled out of first instruction. And so they're going to work with someone around changing their master schedule. Another school is going to say our problem is in early literacy expertise, and we're going to launch into professional development as a component of MTSS. But some schools don't know where to start. They don't even know where in that pathway. And that makes the answer of answer to your question, Kate kind of complicated because what people need is the ability to figure out where they are so that they can jump into something. One of the things he also was recommending in terms of building that capacity is a more regional approach to help to help with professional development to perhaps take on the five recommendations that he has not just one of them but all of them in that package that that is more likely to be affordable if delivered regionally rather than one school district and then people retire and it's forgotten your sense on that. I think that's probably true. I mean I happen to be in a large district myself in a large region. And so that's probably slightly less true for us, but certainly true for others. What I would say is that being consolidated has made it easier for us to do our work. And so if that's a microcosm version of more rural districts that does point to the need for a regional approach. And at the same time we have districts that are trying to break mergers. So we have districts that are merged and we have heard that some some force mergers in many ways because their two elementary schools were merged into the same district. We're able to share resources. I'm sorry I don't mean to make this a discussion about act 46 but I'm continuing to hear the need for a more regional approach. At the same time we have communities that are really really struggling with a fear of losing a small school in the process so any words of wisdom for us. I mean you have a very successful district in that. Yeah. And we had a district who approached consolidation in a positive light. And so I sort of recognize that my experience is different than others but what I can say is we were able to realize much, much more consistency in implementation of all of these structures once we consolidated. So I guess I would just reinforce. It really does. It really does help to work together. I'm not seeing any other hands. Anything from anybody. Representative Colin. Oh I had a good question. They may have gone out of my head. Before you go. It was another 173 related one. Oh yes. I don't have the timeline up that Jim created for us but at a certain point the AOE was supposed to bring on to special ed specialists. And I didn't know if that had happened yet and what role they could play in some of these steps moving forward. So my that that was actually supposed to happen early on that didn't have a delayed implementation like the actual roll over. I actually think that was supposed to be right off in 2018. I, I don't know of positions that exist that are tagged specifically to act 173. Secretary French could tell you I'm sure it. I know who our contact is for Act 173 but it was a, it's a division director who is already at the agency. So I don't exactly know how those, how those positions were used the advisory group has certainly asked that question. Of the agency because it is difficult for the advisory group to see where those positions are and to see their connection to professional development which was the intention was to bring on resources for that and I think the advisory group had struggled to see where those are. If I remember correctly, I think they just moved a few people from within the agency so there was no real position created. They just moved some people around. Yeah, and I think they called that the, but we can check where you remember, do you remember that to ask that of Bill Bates. When he comes in, if you're he knows that. And you'll be back at some point. I'm sure we will be interested in your feedback on weight age. Is it 101 Serita. Yeah, each one of us. So just have had a bill that came through related to community schools and community school model for some districts within high poverty. As a way to address you know equity is not the whole thing cannot always be addressed within a school, and that there are often some other aspects that families need so we're going to be looking at that as well. And we're also going to take another look at construction you should, you should know. It might not be the expert to talk about construction, but no, we certainly have a few in that area. Serita, did you have a last one. Yeah, yeah, just want to say how glad I am Megan to hear that you're looking at data. But honestly, I've been looking at like research on disasters with children and I can't find any data. You know that suppose that all children are going to be impacted. And as a matter of fact, this is like, this has never happened before so I don't think there is any data. So, I love that you're depending on data to inform your kind of instruction and, you know, your work. Yeah, I, I, yeah, I agree it's hard because I don't. No one wants to be the one saying, but a lot of kids are fine. Because I don't really I, we're not trying to be dismissive, but we are trying to say, but some kids are not fine, and many are going to be okay. But the ones that are not are really, really impacted so I do think it's important we just have to figure out how to, how to find them well. I've only heard that from the field. Okay, I don't think I see anything else at this point in time. Representative Coopley you will set. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone. Nice to see you. Nice to see you. In terms of tomorrow. We will, we will hear from the agency right after floor and this is just our coven 19 response update. If you have things that you would like the agency to be reporting. I know I can't always hear the governor's speech I often miss it. There are things that that you are interested in knowing in relation to schools and relation to schools related to testing. Are we in terms of the age groups. Just let me know and we'll we'll make those questions will pose those questions. We will have then we'll have a bill presented. After that. I think it's it's related to studies. Okay, and then we will hear how we will hear from the agency of education regarding coronavirus relief funds that were appropriated in September. Obviously before that, but to see how those have been spent. We will hear related to HVAC improvements that were made, and there is a question. I need to respond to the agent to the appropriations committee related to the budget adjustment act there's one item in there related to using some of the coronavirus relief funds that were not have not been used to use that for in high school to be able to actually have a school while they're under PCB challenge. So that would be it so we should be able to end a little bit early tomorrow. That's my hope. Jesse and I are working Jesse and represent James and I are actually working on scheduling for the following week. And I will, I will know a little bit more about that tomorrow. Can I add a little bit for scheduling tomorrow. Excuse me. I just add in regard to scheduling for tomorrow. Yes. I have added just a couple of witnesses for the HVAC funding following the agency of education tomorrow. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But there for some the agenda now on the committee information page. And we've also added a bill presentation on. Each. Yeah. Yes. But I still expect we should end early. Yeah. Before through 30. Kate. Yes. Just. So I think you used to be clear. Yeah. So you may want to just bump him to 1115 start off with Bill Bates. Speaking about budget adjustment. Okay. That's a, that's a 10 minute conversation. Yeah. And then the other very glaring problem with the agenda tomorrow is I don't see the word lunch in there anywhere. Pushy. Are we going to gear up and just push through and then get down at a good time? Is that the idea? Yeah. I guess we're just going to. Grab break. We can. Thoughts. There's no chance we could make that tax workshop. That's from 12 to one. Yeah. So yeah. So we'll get through. We're at 1115. Yeah. Put 11. Okay. Put noon in there. Yeah. There's time allotted. There's just no official lunch event. Coming back after that. Yes. Coming back. The VSC work group. Tomorrow. Say that again. We have the VSC work group at noon tomorrow. Okay. Oh, you and I just be on your calendar too. Okay. Okay. So the tax work. It's recorded so you can watch it later. I'm going to take a walk instead. And you can also watch it at double speed. And there's a, there's something written, but, but the tax workshops are really, really very interesting. And. Though you don't have to. This is not the exact moment. I don't know. Okay. Okay. So the tax workshop. It's recorded so you can watch it later. I'm going to take a walk instead. I'm going to take a walk. I'm going to take a walk. I'm going to take a walk. I'm going to take a walk. This is not the exact moment that you need to know about it. Right. And I forgot they were recorded. So if you want to work through noon, then I can watch it at another time. I don't want to work through noon. I'm going to, you guys have to have some time. Yeah. So we'll just, just call it noon break. We'll, we'll end. We may even end before that. But just say noon break. I'm going to take a walk. I'm going to take a walk. I can put in parentheses that the tax workshop. That you can watch with your screen off. And have your lunch. Yes. And we're five minutes after floor tomorrow. Yeah, I'd say it's, it's probably 10 minutes before, but five come in within five minutes. And then we'll start. We'll start 10 minutes. Okay. I overruled myself. Okay.