 Good evening, this is Channel 17 Town Meeting Television and tonight we are doing one of our candidate forms, candidate moderations here and tonight, my name is Howard Wooden by the way, tonight we have two gentlemen who are unopposed for the South Burlington School District. I want to introduce both of them and then give them a chance to introduce themselves to you. Right here this is Brian Minier and he's running for the third year term and to his right is Martin LaLonde, I said that correct to Martin and he's running for the second year term. Martin I'm going to start with you. I'll give you a couple minutes, tell the South Burlington citizens why you want to get into this and why you want to be a school board member. I think it's more of not quite yet getting out of this because I've been on the board for nine years and I'm running for the two-year seat. This time I've run for the three-year seats the last three times so the main reason I'm running again is for having continuity on the board. I've been involved in a number of negotiations over the last nine years and next year will be a very interesting new negotiation because of how the state is taking over negotiating health insurance. So I wanted to certainly be able to help with that and also we've been looking at what to do with our infrastructure, master planning and visioning for it's been a few years now. It started looking at the elementary schools and what to do there and then over the last couple years we've turned to really looking at the middle school and high school to see what kind of infrastructure improvements we need just to bring these 50-year-old buildings up to snuff. I don't think that's a technical architectural term but and also look at what kind of changes can be made to the buildings to help further our education of our kids because the way we educate kids are a little bit different now and our building like I say was constructed 50 years ago. So those are things that I really want to see through and after two years I'll help to decide if I will be coming back yet again but hopefully in the next couple years we'll really have dealt with some of these issues I've been dealing with for a very long time. Yeah nine years quite a ways. Brian what about you what's your what's your interest and why are you going after this unopposed even you're already why would you like to do this? Well I have to say hi to the kids anyway because they're off there behind the cameras watching and they are the biggest reasons that I'm doing this. My son Ivan is 13 he's an eighth grader at Tuttle. My daughter Maisie is a nine year old fourth grader at Orchard and my wife who's also back there in the darkness of an undisclosed age was also a product of Orchard Tuttle in South Burlington High School back in the day. I married into this I'm a flat lander I grew up outside of Pittsburgh. My wife and I started dating in 91 which is the first time I came up to South Burlington and came up a couple times per year after and in the late 90s lived just a few blocks from here in the old north end on Manhattan Drive. After which she and I went to graduate school in Madison, Wisconsin both for Slavic languages and literature and both our kids were born while we were out there and just through beautiful serendipity she got a job teaching Russian at the University in spring of 10 I guess it was so moved back to South Burlington very pleased to be able to do so very lucky and I've had a great time here since so just the opportunity now that my kids are a bit older to be able to do something for the schools that I have really had a wonderful experience in and for the community too so. Brian have you ever been on a board before is this your first experience being on a school board? It is my first one yeah and first big volunteer experience too I would say so you know I coach my daughter's soccer team I've helped out a little bit in Orchard at you know the book fair at the school play but this would be the first time doing anything of the size. Given the fact that you're going to be you know fairly new to to the board and you've got people like Martin who have been on there for you know now nine years what do you think you're going how do how are you going to approach your first year or so on the board where do you see yourself? Well first of all learn a lot and ask a lot of questions from my colleagues for whom I've been I have a lot of respect and I've been very impressed with how the board has been doing its business on the financial side of things the jobs that I had after graduate school at the medical foundation in Wisconsin at GE healthcare I think gave me a good familiarity with databases spreadsheets you know working with these kinds of ideas so on the financial side I think I'm on firm footing but I actually think the more important part is the skills that I acquired during my academic time learning how to consume a lot of information dissect an argument figure out what you want to do about it and present it in a way that people can understand sort of show your work as all of my math teachers said over the years you know. In terms of what I'm most interested in I think this is sort of in Bridget Burkhart's wheelhouse but I'm also very interested in the master planning and visioning and sort of what the facilities look like over the next few years how the city center development and the basing of the F-35 change things hopefully not too much right and so I really want to get in deep on that if I can without stepping on Bridget's toes so yeah yeah. Yeah Martin I when you talk about negotiation what has been your role in the past on and past negotiations have you been heavily involved in the negotiation process as a board member and what do you see for the future what do you think is going to be going down especially with those changes in the state. Right I have and and for most of the negotiations the whole board is at the table. This negotiation session which we started in November and last negotiations session a couple years ago we had a negotiating subcommittee and it was the chair Elizabeth Fitzgerald and I two times ago or not the current time because it's current time I've I've I've just been supporting that somewhat but historically with a teacher negotiation we end up at a point where the whole board is is mediating or negotiating so so been involved with that and but there's also other negotiations we do we negotiate with administration with administrators which I've not been part of that team but also with the staff and I've done this is a third time that I've been on the negotiating subcommittee for staff so so been there's been a lot of negotiators it's a big it's a really big part of of the job and and not necessarily the the most fun part because it is an adversarial process often but but that's fine the the the teachers the staff the administrators though we sometimes have tough negotiations I think we are compensating our teachers and staff and administrators very well and for a reason because we have excellent teachers and excellent administrators and excellent staff and that's why the school district does so well it'll be interesting next year I mean because the way we've negotiated in the past it's a complete compensation package that includes salary and benefits and all all of a sudden the state will be telling us what one of the most important benefit there are other benefits that we still have on the table so it will narrow what our negotiation is and it's I'm not sure how that's going to go we'll see it'll be new it's certainly we'll get complicated I think more complicated than it has been and I want to remind our viewers though that you can call in a question at any time the number is 862-3966 and we'd lovely take any questions that you have and these gentlemen would certainly love to answer your questions you right before this forum we had the South Burlington School budget presentation I want to start Martin you're on the board I'm assuming and maybe wrongfully that you support that budget and I want to get also Brian's view on it and what you think are the the highlights or the things that viewers should know about it from a board's or board's purposes well I think I think the the key point is that it will continue to offer the programming to meet our students needs it will continue to provide I think the exemplary education that we provide that the community expects it will continue to provide opportunities for professional development for our teachers to make sure that they continue to be some of the best teachers in the state so it does all those things it also does the necessary facility maintenance that we need to have as we're waiting for master planning and visioning to tell us what else might be done so I think it's it's definitely going to keep our public schools in South Burlington being top notch and yeah there is there is an increase in in the budget and there is a slight increase in the in the property tax rate although it's still lower than it was a couple years ago I think that the board and the administration really in the budget they present to us after going through a citizen advisory process we've we're looking at the bottom line very carefully but there are a lot of cost pressures that are out of our control including health insurance increases the need for facility maintenance additional needs that we are covering with our students the student population that that we have there seem to be a lot more behavioral issues that we're having to deal with in the school and all those things cost more money but I think our community expects the product that we're producing and we're doing it in a cost that so far they've been able to support Brian you're new to this what do you think about this year's budget proposal absolutely support it I first started following the school board more closely about five years ago when there was a proposal from the superintendent to put the fifth grade elementary school kids in the middle school started paying attention then and after that time started attending more school board meetings had the chance to see budgets developed and I have to say I've been impressed with the job that they've done I don't see any profligacy in what they're doing the negotiations as far as I can tell have been hard-nosed as evidenced by one strike by an imposition I mean it's you know there's not a lot of fat there and so I think you also need to take a look back at the long-term perspective and say over the past 10 years the average annual increase has been about 2.2 percent or something like that this is not huge especially in the community as Martin said that values its education so highly the other thing to remember is whenever a budget is built as I understand it you do it from the ground up so nothing is grandfathered over from the previous year there's no extraneous stuff that could be cut out you say do we need this this year and I think if you look at what was put forward this year you know maybe 80 percent of the budget is baked in in the form of salaries and benefits and so what you really need to look at is okay what's being added and you look at the additions to this year's budget and to me they all seem quite defensible it's access for kids so it's adding three FTEs for early elementary education at Central or it is changing the nine paraeducators to five special educators to better give access to our kids with special needs there just isn't a whole lot there that you can take much issue with I don't think once you get into sort of a line by line look at it so yeah I think it's a great budget and I think it's well done and as we start to look ahead at as Martin was also talking about the facilities and you start looking at your plants what do you think are the capital needs and various things that are going to be popping up that you anticipate the you know the school district is going to have to deal with and yeah so some of this is near term and you can see that covered by the bond that's going to be on the on the town meeting ballot yeah so most of that bond I think about half of that bond is for upgrades to months in field which if you've been to a game there and the weather is cold and you have to use one of the porta-potties you would probably agree that improvements could be used for longer term it sort of depends I mean we're still waiting to see exactly how city center is going to shake out and what that's going to affect how that's going to affect central we're still waiting to find out about all of the the noise measurements from the basing of the f-35 at burlington international does that change does that change chamberlain meaningfully hit may I have been impressed over the time that my kids have been in the district by how much people value their neighborhood elementary schools and what a sense of community is built around them and so partly for to preserve that feeling but partly just to be fiscally prudent I hope that we can just improve the facilities that we have to get them up to speed for 21st century learning I do not want to see if possible consolidating into some large you know mega elementary school off in the southeast quadrant so and Martin what do you think what's your perspective now taking a look at facilities in the future what do you what do you anticipate well uh especially you were talked about the educational changes that might be you know so the the when we looked at the elementary schools and whether to consolidate ultimately we decided really where we needed to put our emphasis and our money was at the high school and middle school we thought we'd get more educational bang for the buck by investing in in those schools so we've been working with with an architect that also has a lot of expertise in in school construction have built or renovated schools in vermont and massachusetts we have a group of of individuals on including teachers and staff and community members a board member administrators who have been looking at this issue with with the with the architecture and their expert experts as well so we've been looking at what we can do with the high school and middle school and we're going to have a number of options which will will be presented and we'll be looking at more closely and what we'll be looking at is again all right if we invest in certain thing what is our educational return what is the return as far as just the school learning environment for our students and that's the kind of things it's sometimes a little hard to really understand those benefits but but we want to as clearly as we can kind of match the benefits to what the cost is and then determine how to go forward because it's it's going to be substantial it'll be a substantial bond that over the next couple years i would imagine we may be asking the community to support but the the buildings are they're a little bit tired they're not they do need some work although it's not just the buildings really that that creates the culture of the school i mean it's the students it's the it's the staff it's the teachers so i think it's still a very vibrant community but we could certainly have a upgraded facility well and i'm really was impressed with the idea that you instead of saying facilities or buildings you use the term infrastructure which i thought was great because i think that is kind of the way we need to start looking at it's not just buildings it's the infrastructure all the way through and it's that to me seems like a change in the the approach is we're not just looking at facilities we're looking at the entire school system you know we're trying to see how this all coordinates the guys very impressive i think um you know this is going to be a little controversial but it's on it's one of the questions and i wanted to talk to um both of you a little bit about racial bias and those things that are happening you know the state um i think is still dealing and we're continuing to deal with a lot of those issues and and uh where do you think south burlington stands and where do you think we should they can be going with this i'll start with you brian i mean it's a work in progress right so um i think it was about half a year ago we were looking at one of my wife's old pictures from when she was in orchard elementary school and we compared it to my daughter's picture from her second grade year and the difference was right there you know the community has become more diverse and i'm glad to see that reflected in what's happening in our schools i mean it's being embraced early on in elementary school by having days where you celebrate different cultures the kids do posters about their countries there's different food served and so just at that low level it starts happening and then as you get up into the middle and high school curriculum i do believe it's being addressed more in language arts and social studies classes this notion of diversity what does it mean why is it important and just recently obviously the choice was made uh by the students i think it's a justice union now it was the student diversity union to request the flying of the black lives matter flag um the administration and the board uh agreed to that and i agree with that decision i think it's important to have these conversations i don't think you need to see that choice as a political one but rather as an issue of civil rights you can say it's black history month but this isn't just history right these things continue to happen they continue to happen and they're affecting what's going on right now so i think the issue of racial bias is a real one um i hope it's being mitigated and mediated somewhat just by the fact that we're becoming more diverse and more aware of these issues um but i'm very glad that the students brought this up and that the board and the administration supported them and wanting that conversation what do you think yeah i you went through that whole you know change of things are you seeing a perspective from a board yeah and we've we started really seen this a few years ago that this was something we needed to do and it really started with uh retiring the rebels name you know respecting the alumni who were rebels but but uh understanding going forward that it was no longer appropriate and that really came uh i give the credit to our administration uh and the students um i mean the board the way we work uh our policy governance is what it's called is we really defer to the experts uh the administrators in the school and they were saying for instance that the rebel name was not working it was excluding uh students it was making students uncomfortable and we fully supported that uh change uh and and i think the next step and in the in this really the student justice union has really been driving this uh and and it's great that they have been uh really trying to uh include uh or have better inclusivity uh and understanding of of uh of the historic implicit bias uh that that we see so are we have staff and teachers being trained we have uh implicit bias training so the it's really trying to build the understanding that there are these biases uh and and that we need to deal with them to have as an equitable offering to our students as possible and and we will continue to look at this it is it is a statewide issue and and i know that uh the house has passed a bill that uh is going to create a group to help uh come up with uh inclusivity ethnic diversity curriculum and and trying to have us understand that there are more stories than what we've been telling and explaining over the over the past decade so so that will be an improvement as well that'll take a little time but it's it's something we're dealing with and i think we recognize it and and we are you know trying to improve the situation what's interesting is that unlike almost the rest of the state south burlington school population is either you know continues to go up or at least level off versus the rest of the state which seems to be in somewhat of a decline for students so what do you attribute that to uh we're very fortunate in that way that's true um our population is increasing somewhat our student age population too and so these forces that you see in other parts of the state to consolidate schools um you really don't feel them here and partly it's just such a vibrant interesting community lots of fun stuff to do i mean there's a reason my wife and i were delighted to come back here it's partly because she's from here and partly because it's a great place and so you put that together with job opportunities the best schools in the state and you have a critical mass and people want to come here and i'm glad it is sparing us some of the pain that you're finding elsewhere yeah yeah i mean people are coming to south burlington in part for for the schools uh that we have and uh but also there's a general demographic trend of urbanization and and the rural schools are where uh we're suffering the biggest decreases people are moving to urban areas including south burlington where they have the infrastructure where they have the infrastructure yeah where they have the offerings where we have the opportunities and that's that's a big part of it as well is that we have the critical mass to have an excellent uh offering to our students what do you anticipate five years from now you may not be on the board anymore but you know what where do you see what are the going to be the issues that you think this this community is going to have to deal with in five years i think we see some of the same trends already we've we've been dealing with uh i mentioned behavior issues i think it's more of an understanding of of uh aces uh and and i'm going to probably forget exactly what that stands for adverse childhood experiences that's what it stands for and there's increasing awareness of of of trauma and how it affects children but there's also and this has been a trend for a while and i see it continuing that that we need to educate to the fullest extent every student that comes through the door it's not like it in the past where students could find a manufacturing job or can make a living we need to get them set you know it can be a vocational job but we really need to pay attention to every student and maximize their opportunity ability i don't see that all of a sudden changing in five years i will see i will think that by then we will really uh be hitting our stride as far as personalized learning plans proficiency based graduation all these initiatives that have been starting over the last few years uh our first class that will be graduating on proficiency based graduation uh requirements will be next year uh but there are there are kinks to work out on that and and i think in five years will unless the state has completely changed what they want us to do what do you think brian where do you where do you you may be on the board i may well i hope to be um it's exciting i i like that in the school's ends what they ask for their uh for the students to achieve that you talk not just about what are the skills and yes that's part of a personalized learning plan but you talk about the whole student like a disposition for lifelong learning what kind of a citizen are they going to be and so you're kind of doing things on both ends right you're trying to get kids in when they're three four five and doing the early education you're trying to open it up as widely as you can to people with different abilities and make sure that everybody gets the best education they can and then you're trying to turn them into a person who can not only find a job but who has meaning in their life and who can help their community so i i love the way that it's designed i agree with martin that the plps are a work in progress it was a little bit bumpy when we had our first meeting with our son's teacher too but um it does seem to be coming together i like the idea that you're measuring actual skills that students can produce rather than you know time that their butt was in a seat right um i'm very hopeful i i really think the district is on a good course and i i hope to help it continue you know i didn't come into the axe to grind or anything i want to help the good work continue let me i'm going off book a little bit because i think you guys can help me and others understand why what why can't we keep graduates here in vermont after they graduate from high school why what what's it going to take for us to bring you know kids back from college and to bring them and make that move that you guys came back to and set up shop again and do it what do you what do you think is going to i had that's that's a very good question you do a great job up to grade 12 and then well well i i i think it's important to try to have opportunities for kids coming right out of college uh i'm more focused on trying to to bring families back right uh brian came back when they have children i i you know if there are opportunities in vermont uh to have students stay here that's great um but i'm you know i'm not trying to tell my own kids that you need to stick around it's like you know go out and find yourself in the world but come back when you have grandkids for me you know i say so so i think that that's you know so i don't consider that a huge problem uh frankly i mean we do need to work on our workforce and that's a whole other separate issue um and we do want to be very attractive to have families you know come come back to vermont we've got a couple of minutes left or less than a couple of minutes left is there anything you'd like to leave you know the citizens of any final statement you'd like to make so before that which i will get to just a quick follow-up on martin's good yes when i talked to david young a couple of days ago one of the ideas that i talked to him about that i was most excited about is this big picture project they have at the high school it's the only one in the state where kids i think just in the last two years can partner with local companies like logic supply there's an industrial design firm and they can have almost like an internships experience in high school get great skills possibly have a job lined up afterwards i think that's one way you keep people around is get them lined up ahead of time like make a pipeline to these local businesses so that's one thing i'm super excited about um in terms of a sum up i am just pleased to be given the opportunity i love how the school's been running i want to keep them running well and um yeah just kudos to the board and i hope i can fit in and do my part that's all yeah final statement well it's been a privilege to serve for nine years i'll look forward to at least another couple years and i really appreciate you having us on oh you're absolutely welcome and it's an art pleasure to have you and so i want to urge um voters to make sure you go out and vote on election day and that channel 17 will post this um this this forum uh on its website and you can find this and many other forms on the channel seven home 17 hometown television website thank you very much for watching and we'll see you next time