 Okay, good afternoon, everyone. This is the Vermont House Committee on Commerce and Economic Development. It is Tuesday, March 22nd at 3.31. We've come back from the floor. If floor is finished, thank God. We wanted to show if we were, we were gonna have time to meet with you, Patrick and Hannah, but we are, we're happy to have you with us just for the committee's update. This is, Hannah is another student that was on the, on the Zoom meeting we had a few weeks ago with students from VZAC. And so we've asked, we asked students to come in and meet with us last week and end this week. And we, Hannah was able to join us. We really appreciate your ability to join us, Hannah. We just want to kind of have a discussion with you like we did with the students last week. So it gives us a better understanding of, what you went through in your journey through school and what you're looking at now post-graduation when you finish up your education at your high school and going forward. And so we thank you again for joining us. We know you have a busy schedule and we always appreciate speaking with our students. So I don't know, Patrick, if you wanted to tee it up a little bit or just go to Hannah, I'll leave it to you. Sure, I appreciate that, Chair Marquette. The only thing I will say is just on behalf of some of the other students that were part of that initial panel and that you would offer the opportunity to come and testify, I just offer their regrets. As you can imagine, a lot of them are juggling a lots of things. Both of them have part-time jobs, trying to reschedule their dual enrollment courses or other courses. And they were able to do that for our panel but asked them to do it again. So it quickly was just a challenge for many of them. So I offer their regrets and I get gratitude for the opportunity. But yeah, I think you really want to hear from Hannah who's an amazing young person in our community. So I'll turn it right over to you, Representative Marquette. Thank you. So Hannah, before you begin, I think it'd be great for you to know where all of the representatives that are here at the table come from or from all around the state. So I'm Mike Marquette and I'm from Coventry and I'm Chair of the Committee. My name is Charlie Kimball. Vice Chair of the Committee, I'm from Woodstock. And it may be if everybody raised their hands. So it's kind of hard for people on Zoom to see us. Mike Niagara, I'm in Bennington. And I'm Emma Mulvaney-Sanuck. I represent a part of Burlington. I'm John Kosenska from the town of Burke. Logan Nicole, I'm from Wadlow. Wayne LaRussia, I'm from Franklin. Kirk White, I'm from Bethel. It's Stephanie Jerome and I'm a Ranking Member and I'm from Brandon. So, and then over here, we have our committee assistant. I'm Kira. So Hannah, again, welcome. Oh, we have Warren. Someone waving up. Warren is a, sorry, Warren. So we have Representative Kitzmiller with us also on Zoom. Hi, I'm Warren Kitzmiller and I represent Montpelier. Warren, you haven't been able to say your standard welcome. Yeah. You're all right. Oh yeah, yeah. Well, it's hard to say because some of us aren't sitting in my district right now. I know. I don't know. Everybody that I see sitting at the table is sitting in my district. Okay. So welcome and I think Patrick may have given you a few questions that you could go through first and then we can continue to chat with you. Yeah. Why don't I go ahead and tee up the first one for you? So Hannah, you've been doing a lot of work with VZAC and you've traveled a little bit as well to kind of represent your experience. But can you tell me a little bit about the perception of how the CTE experience is presented to you in your school as a starting point? Yeah. So we hear quite a lot about, we have a CCV area and we hear in our career center like quite a bit about that. I think that any opportunity for things to come sooner would be really beneficial, whether that's college planning or further after high school plans. So we do have in our career center a lot of options available. Usually that starts at around after 10th grade just because of our required courses at every school. So if it was offered maybe earlier I think people could learn more about it but I do think that we do a very good job of offering those classes in our counseling department. Everybody teaches about them and we have our one-on-one meetings because at my school we don't have guidance counselors. We have just counselors and a counseling department which the slight difference is just that they get to know us more and it really helps in planning for the future. So I think that that's really awesome. And what school are you at, Hannah? Brattleboro Union High School. Hey. That's great. And we actually had one of your representatives here just walked in. And class of 1989. The parents of two recent. So it's represent Alina. So Hannah, I think you did not directly experience the Career and Technical Education Center. How early were you exposed what the opportunities were there and how was that presented to you, do you recall? Yeah, so when we come into the high school we have our tours and that's I went to BAMS which is Brattleboro Area Middle School and that's the adjourning. It's the school that's attached to the high school. So every middle school gets a tour and we do take a tour of the Career Center and we're taught a little bit about the classes that are available there. However, when we are taught about the classes it's more like there are some business options and we have a mechanical area but it's less of what's actually there just because we're not really available to take most of the classes until junior to sophomore year. So we do hear more about that later with less of a tour but more of a one-on-one discussion or group discussion from the counseling department. Other, so questions, committee. So yeah, hi, it's Charlie Kimball from What Stocks. So your middle school is adjoined to the high school and the Career Center is on the same campus? Yeah. Okay, yep, that's all one of them. And so you get a walk-through in junior high, that's what you're saying. Yeah, and we get one in high school as well like we have our freshman first day and things like that where we get to take a tour and see more of that. Yep, okay, cool, got it, thank you. But I think you mentioned before that it may be advantageous for maybe a freshman and sophomore to be able to access programs in the CTE. So a little earlier than 11th grade. Yeah, we do have, it is available because usually we can take a class or two after we have our set classes that we have to take but just with the way the system works like we have to take our specific English and math and language classes that are required for graduation. So it's more often that people won't really get to really get into the Career Center if that's what they want to do until junior or sophomore years but the classes are available if they have ruined their schedule. Oh, okay. Well, that schedule can always gum up the work sometimes. Yeah. You know how many students or approximately access the Career Center in Brattleboro? I'm not sure actually but I think a pretty good amount because we do have a lot of options. However, right now with COVID and things that are going on a lot of the classes are overlapping with some of the school time. My school offers an ACE period which is an extra time to check in with teachers or do extra work and that's a 45 minute block of time but because of the guidelines surrounding a lot of the Career Center classes they have to go for longer. So a lot of our students have missed every ACE just because of the Career Center classes that they have which has been a struggle. You think it would be helpful to have to allow secondary CTE students like yourself to be able to access the adult programs in the evening like we do with dual enrollment so that we would provide the pay for the cost of student taking one of those courses and the adult side. I think that'd be great. I think a lot of people probably would take advantage of that especially if the classes were more going into a department that they want to go into or a field that they want to go into. I think that a lot of our students that are interested in the medical field take some classes in the Career Center and then get to internship or work in the hospital and that is a shift that they do. So I do think that people would take advantage of that. That's good. We wanna make sure that students that are motivated that are looking at their future, especially if you're in 12th grade, you're ready to leap into the world and you wanna make sure that those students that want to upgrade their skill level are able to do that. And so I think it's something that we're working on right now in our workforce bill is to allow for something like that to happen so that it gets paid for. It's not borne by the student or the student's parents. Yeah, the offering of dual enrollment and VHS which is the virtual high school classes. So many of our students take advantage of that. And so if there were classes that could support different career paths later after school or going into the field that they're interested in, in college, I 100% think people would take advantage of that. Do you think there's a, you have a lot of students that you're graduating this year and your colleagues that are graduating, is there a large number of them going on to college or do you think, or is there a good number of them also not going to college and maybe going on to technical school or just going into the workforce? We have people going into all of those fields. We do have a large amount of people that are planning on going into college. And I do know that we have people going into both the workforce, the military, and just technical school. I don't know the exact percentages of them but I do know that we have people going everywhere. Committee members, questions? Yeah, Hannah, you're in dual enrollment now, right? Yes. What class are you taking and where? I'm taking sociology through CCV. I'm taking advanced Spanish through, I think it's New Hampshire's college. I'm pretty sure we don't get to know all of our colleges. If it's through CCV, we usually use the CCV portal and that's how I know that one. And then I'm also taking Law in American Society but I'm not sure which college that one's through. You're taking three right now. Yes. Wow, and do you find the course study difficult? Yeah, they're all through my school and they're difficult. It's just an advanced level I'd say but we do get the help from our teachers because they are all through the school and it's really helpful to have time to talk one on one with teachers if we need it. One of my teachers is doing it in a very college way where he gives us the assignments and then we have a day or two a week where he doesn't really give us any work and we just work on our assignments and he'll be sitting in the back so we can ask him questions. So it's more of a college readiness and that's really helpful. Wait a minute, the teacher that is in Brattleboro is giving you that instruction or is it all instruction with the campus at CCV or somewhere else? My dual enrollment classes are all through my school. So I have my teacher teaching the college classes, my VHS teacher. So he must be accredited through CCV? Yes. If you didn't have somebody from CCV come in and give us a brief lesson on how to use the portal on Zoom and he'll be watching some classes but it is all taught by our VHS teachers. That's great. That's different. It's gonna be a unique system. Yeah, that it's really cool. It's how I've done all of my dual enrollment classes here and it's been really helpful. That's great. So that's all dual enrollment and that's through the CTE. Are you doing other stuff at the CTE besides dual enrollment? No. Okay. And Hannah, can you, that's not really through the CTE though or that's through the personal principal, right? No, yeah. It's like our colleges are through CCV is where we're taking that one and then credits get charged. CTE, not CTE. Yeah. Yeah, CCV. CCTE still? No, I don't. No, okay, okay. All right. And Hannah, maybe good just for context to talk a little bit about just for you as an individual what your path is. Where are you looking to go and to do with your career just for the context of why you're taking those dual enrollment courses? Yeah, of course. So I'm very interested in history. So right now I've selected that to be my major for all the schools that I've applied to. I'm not exactly sure what I wanna do with this necessarily yet, but I am very interested in law and politics. And I'm also very interested in language and traveling. So it's kind of a very broad thing, but I'm in my school's International Studies Academy. And so we get to do work with figuring out where we wanna go with that. And I hope to travel and study abroad in college through history and then see where that can take me. And then I do hope to probably come back to Vermont after that. Yay. Yay. She wants to work on a campaign. Are you sure you're still in high school? You're extremely well spoken. Hannah, if I could prompt one more thing just because this is something I think, Chair Mark, you mentioned in the panel conversation and it might be good to have Hannah just speak to this a little bit. So there's the practical things that you are all very interested in, but then there's the perceptions as well. And Hannah, can you speak to what you believe your peers kind of how they perceive the CTE Center versus attritional high school? And do they feel like there's a certain class of kids that get shepherded toward one program or the other? Or is it pretty much here all the opportunities work and do what works for you? Hannah, how does that presented in your school with all your counselors and the advocates that are trying to help the students? Yeah, I think that there is, it's hard to not have some sort of perception in high school. I think that a lot of high schools do have that kind of atmosphere that it creates and then it just kind of travels through the years. So I don't think that our counselors, I will, I don't say I don't think, our counselors do not really push certain people towards certain things because we have counselors and not guidance counselors, they get to know us better and so they can help us decide what we wanna do. So they always ask our opinions on what we're interested in and what we wanna study and what we're thinking of doing after school and through learning those things about us, they're able to say, okay, well, I think I suggest these classes to you or these ones. So I've had classes suggested to me in both the career center and regular classes and virtual high school classes. And then as for the student body, I think that there may be used to be more of a perception on like maybe the career center is more people who are planning to go to a trade school or get into the workforce after school. But I do think that that's changed this year and I think much more people are taking advantage of the career center. It's also possible that when we were younger, we didn't really know what the career center offered and so that's what we thought and now that I'm the senior and I can see all my friends in the medical field taking advantage of the career center classes or just other people around me taking advantage of all the classes and seeing all the business classes that are provided. It's a different perception but I do think that there is something around that. Kana, are you also taking AP classes or just the dual enrollment classes? I'm just taking dual enrollment right now. And are there AP classes offered at your school? Or are they only doing dual enrollment for kids who are interested in college? We do have AP classes, yeah. I took AP lit last year and then we also have AP Lang and that's what we have for English. And then we have AP calculus for math and I think we have an AP bio, something like that in the science department and then we have the advanced Spanish classes which and that and the math are not full year but they are, you can, if you're taking the advanced language class, you can take the AP exam in that language. Thanks. John? Kana, are there some, are there any offerings either through CTE or dual enrollment that you wish would be offered maybe in the future, maybe things you've, you're not in CTE but maybe things just you've learned through interactions with your peers there but anything else I can do in enrollment too? I think that we do have a very wide variety and I don't know if I would necessarily say I wish more was offered but I do think even though we, I am saying that we are taught about all of those which I do agree with, I think it being repeated would be slightly beneficial just because learning about all of this in high school it's a very stressful and challenging time and that can be tricky with remembering all of the options because so many are available. I think a lot of people forget about the career center when they're scheduling classes because it's such a stressful time of, oh, it's March, it's winter, I just need to pick my classes for next year and get it over with and figure out what I need to do to graduate and people don't tend to realize that they can really set themselves up more. And so I think just we, I actually talked about it last night on a leadership council with my counselors but just more of a list of what's going on and maybe a workshop of telling people and telling the students what's available to them and how they could go further in their careers or in potential college life of what they want to study. So I do think we have everything. I just think more people would take advantage of it if we did have more of the lessons on how to and that includes virtual high school as well, I think. Thank you. Other questions, committee? Hannah, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. It's very helpful to have this discussion with you. It validates some of the things that we're hearing and thinking and also assists us in further thinking about how to provide I think an overall education. So, and I think it's really great that your school is not directing you towards one direction or another but presenting everything to you and letting you make up your mind of where you wanna go and how you should go to get to attain your goal. So I think that's great. We're really proud of you. We hope you find a lot of success and as you move forward in your education and then become a member in the workforce and glad to hear that you wanna come back to Vermont. So thank you again for joining us. It's been a pleasure and Patrick, thank you. We'll chat some more about maybe bringing some of the adult students in to talk with them as well to get their perspective. So we tend to look at both sides of the CTE when it deals with workforce. And so it's been very valuable to have the secondary students, especially like you Hannah that are graduating this spring and to get your perspectives but now we're gonna talk to the students on the other side of it that are trying to really upscale themselves or get a skill through the CTE center. So thank you again and all the best to you. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. So committee, I think my understanding is we're done for the day. Sarah hasn't been the ability to work on language that probably won't be done until tonight. And I don't wanna hold you sitting here for hours and hours doing nothing. So I think we can deal with that in the morning. And so we'll look at that language when we get in tomorrow. I think we'll pass it, have the conversations we'll let ways and means and a probes now we'll probably do that tomorrow as well. We'll go through it with them but we also need to divvy up the sections that are in it. So once we pass the amendment then we'll all get together and decide who's doing what. So we can create that map of the floor. So it looks like we'll probably present Thursday and Friday. So any questions before we go off live? Okay. Well, thanks everyone for another interesting day. Good job, Pallie and Stephanie on the floor. Well done. Well done by both of you. I think two good bills that came out of here. Hopefully if they go through, they'll do a lot of good.