 Good afternoon, everyone. Today is Tuesday, February 9th, it's 1.30 p.m. And this is Senate Education. We are going to be spending our afternoon today talking with those who have been working on behalf of our students around an issue that is a top priority for the legislature this year. And that is how do we address any kind of possible student deficit in this post-COVID world? We all know where things are at. Schools are, some have hybrid models happening, others are back full-time. We know that this some aren't in at all. We know that this model has been with us now for just about a year. And it is something that we have had for lack of a better expression. You know, there've been people who've been okay with it. And then we have some people that are going, some young people who are going to really have some real deficits and need some assistance going forward. So that is what we're going to be talking about. And we have dedicated a good part of today to do that. For committee members and others that are following our work, I think a couple of points that are also worth making, making just looking at the schedule ahead. Tomorrow we are hearing from the McClure Foundation as we kind of continue our work around how to give greater access to students in need and of interest in higher education, trying to break down some of those financial barriers. I've been in conversation with Senator Kitchell, was with her a little bit talking with her about this over the weekend. And we're going to have additional conversations tomorrow with the money chairs around access to higher education as well as continue our conversation around literacy. I want to thank Senator Perchlich and two of our guests from last week to spend some time today working on the issue of literacy. And I suspect we'll move forward with a new draft on that related to that issue. And I know that the chair of appropriations and other senators are also interested in working with us to address this. The other thing I want to mention because I know senators are probably receiving emails about the waiting study. I have a meeting tomorrow morning with Senator Ballin and Senator Cummings. I think really this is something that I know that this committee looked at last year. It ended up in finance and then the pandemic hit and finance was not able to take it up. But it really is a tax bill. So it will end up in finance. And I think what I'm really interested in doing is just getting an understanding from the corner office and from Senator Cummings and even our house counterparts, everyone's where everybody stands on this. What I don't want is an academic exercise where this committee spends a couple of weeks on an issue. And then we know it's not going to make it through the additional stages as it, you know, in the legislature either this year or next year. So I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page. To me, bottom line is it seems like a good bill worth considering. But I do think we need to somewhat clear the way and get a sense of what our colleagues in the Senate finance are interested in taking up and when, and that's true for our house counterparts. So those are a few updates. I want to thank our guests who have been meeting outside of the chamber as in a way we all have, but all of you have been particularly outside of the chamber, meeting with one another, looking at this issue of a post COVID world for our youngest, Vermonter. So with that, unless I see immediate questions, why don't we move to, let me start by Mr. Fannin. You were the one who helped orchestrate these conversations. I'm wondering if there's anything you want to say and if you want to tee up the first guest, whatever you'd like to do. So thank you, Senator Campion. Thanks for reaching out originally and engaging me in this. I did get everybody together and then, but better minds and minds. Oh, one second, Senator Perslick, did you have a question? No, you didn't. Okay, okay, sorry. Then better minds and minds took it from there. So we're going to lead with Dave Yance is going to talk with us first and outline it and the presidents are all going to weigh in and the rest of us are here to contribute in any way possible. But it was a group effort. And I want to thank all of them for participating and getting us here today. And it's just a first step. I'll say that and there's a lot more steps to come. So with that, I'll turn it over to Dave Yance. Thank you very much. Well, Mr. Fannin, before you do that, would you just, did I frame it properly? Is that really how you took this charge on? Really looking at what it's going to be like for students come this summer after having spent roughly a year in a variety of different educational settings. As you're seeing the principles we've got, the idea is to, I think we looked at this a little bit more long-term, not just the summer that we're still in the middle of a pandemic. We're not through it yet, sadly. There's work for all of us to do. But I think the priority first for everybody is to get through the pandemic. And we don't, there are a lot of unknowns. And we had the conversation this morning, the group did. And we still don't know a lot. I mean, it's significant. And these questions are not insignificant as we start to move ahead. And so the principles that we've outlined are designed to sort of move us along but also make us aware that it's not just the summer, it's beyond. And hopefully we get beyond the pandemic. I mean, I'm hopeful, but I don't know. And I'm not an epidemiologist by any stretch. We're just simple educators. We wanted to educate kids, all of us. Right. And you certainly, you all have a ground level viewer connected to a ground level view more than the legislature is. So I'm sure that this is going to be a good conversation around what you're seeing, what you're not seeing and how to help our students. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. With that, Senator Campion, is it okay if I begin? Yes, please. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks to Jeff Fanon for that introduction. Thanks to our senators, the committee for the work you do. What you value is what we value. And we're grateful to have the opportunity to work with you on that. Just so you know, I was chosen because they told me I had a face for radio. They didn't contemplate that we'd be on YouTube. So unfortunately, you're stuck with me as the emcee for our portion of this event. Ideally, I'd like to work through process and principles that we came up with. And as I work through each of those, I will pause and redirect to some of my colleagues who will have some additional comments. And we would love to take any questions that you have after we've gone through all the information that we are hoping to share with you. Jeff Fanon mentioned a collaborative process. I think it's important to note just in this moment that the four organizations that we represent, that represent the Vermont NEA, the VPA, VSA and the School Board Association, we all support doing everything we can to take care of our kids. We all support doing everything we can to take care of our faculty and staff. And our communities. And you know that you see us in this context, sometimes separate from each other. I would suggest that the four of our organizations coming together to you to present something that we've worked on collaboratively in an iterative process is, it's meaningful to me. And I hope that there is some gravity that the folks that are here talking to you today, that that does represent some good thought and some good planning. We are definitely cognizant of the priorities that we have heard clearly stated from Dan French, Secretary of Education, addressing the mental health needs of members of the school community, emphasizing re-engagement of students and their families, including addressing things like chronic truancy and supporting academic success and achievement. And Senator Campion, to your question, the wonder or the open-ended question of what will the after effects of the pandemic be is something that is on our minds collectively very consistently. I would suggest though that our work together was in some ways fueled by concern that as doers, all of us are leaders and all of us like to get things done, that there might be a tendency among us to just try to create something to fix it. And what we realize is we don't yet fully know what needs to be fixed and whatever does need to be fixed won't be a short term fixed. So the principles that we're going to share are really what we see as kind of the foundation or the bedrock of what our planning and thinking and potentially legislation needs to be moving forward. So again, I'll go through these for the committee and I'll pause to redirect to some of my colleagues in order to hear what they have to say as well. Our first key guiding principle is one that is critical and it's about equity. We do believe that every student needs to receive the resources and the educational opportunities that they need in order to learn and thrive. And I do know that my colleague with the Vermont NEA, Don Tinney has a few thoughts to share on that concept for you. Thank you, Dave. Don Tinney, Vermont NEA. I apologize if I have some bandwidth issues here today, but I think we've most often heard around the issue of equity as it relates to internet access and digital devices. But I think it's important that we realize moving forward that equity plays out in a number of areas for instance, housing is a critical issue for our students. Does each student have a quiet study area, for instance? With our ELL students, the question is often, do they have someone at home in their family who can speak English, who can assist them with their lessons? We've seen as you've heard from a number of folks over the recent months around the issues of food insecurity. One of the things that became very clear in the pandemic is how important, critically important schools are in providing proper nutrition for the children and youth of Vermont. So as we move forward, we need to continue to look at that as we consider how we provide universal school meals to every child. I think one of the areas where equity is of critical importance, and it became very clear in the pandemic is transportation. Without safe, reliable school transportation for every student, we cannot assure that all students have equal access to our education. An example of this really is, my colleagues will appreciate is the activity bus, right? We call the activity bus, which is the bus that brings students home from their afternoon activities or early evening activities, whether that be sports practices or drama. If a school does not provide an activity bus, then those students who can't afford their own private transportation or from families that can't provide that transportation, they cannot participate in those after school activities. So that one element that activity bus is critical to providing an equitable education for all students. And in terms of equity, we also need to talk about not just social equity, but racial equity. And one of the most unfortunate aspects of the pandemic in this time period is, then the results or the reactions to the murder of George Floyd. So we need to pay particular attention to the social emotional needs of our BIPOC students who have experienced a trauma that few of us can understand as they've witnessed the events that have unfolded in recent months. And we need to continue to listen to them, to create safe spaces for them, as well as our educators of color. Thank you. Thank you, Don. The second key principle that we have for your consideration is that the process of recovery is a long-term proposition with a likely duration of a minimum of three years. Jay Nichols, my colleague with the VPA has some feedback and some perspective to share with you on that. Good afternoon, committee. Thank you for having us. So to start with, there are a lot of different studies that are out there. Most conclude that all students will have what many are determined as learning loss in some level or another. We can talk more about that term later and I worry that people will start thinking about this totally in terms of a deficit and mind frame and we wanna be careful about that. We need to remember that compared to most other places we're in pretty good shape. I wanna quickly refer to two studies. The McKinsey study looks at the research as if students that had no new formal learning essentially since March. And that is true for some students. Remember, there are cities that haven't come back to school at all yet and they've had some online learning but for some students they have not had access to that especially students in poverty. With that metric, they estimate the average student will have lost approximately seven months of learning loss on average. And for low-income students on average that loss would be over 12 months of learning loss. So we're talking over 12 months of learning loss in less than a year. So think about that mathematically for a minute. The Northeastern Evaluation Association research measure of academic progress, which is the research that Secretary of French has cited in the General Assembly a couple of times has looked at test results, actual test results of tens of thousands of students and has concluded for those students tested that on average the students in reading have had very little loss and the students in math have had a five to 10% loss and mathematical understanding. The problem with that assessment though is the only tested students who are in person in schools. Thus for the most part are most vulnerable and are consequently poverty inflicted students were not in this data. And these are the kids that we have the greatest concerns about on average. The bottom line is that researchers from the Brookings Institute to Brown University and many other researchers are suggesting that recovery as it relates to K-12 education will be a three to five year period. We set a minimum of three years, we're Vermont but we think we can do a great job in three years. Thank you. Thank you, Jay. Our third important guiding principle is that existing policy and practice initiatives should contribute to the foundation for supporting recovery. Examples would be Act 173, Act 77, multi-tiered systems of support expectations and educational support team expectations that are already in regulation. I'd actually like to speak to this. I shared with this committee a few weeks ago that I believed it was important that school districts, teachers, school leaders have the time and the space to work through the recovery process without additional regulation or legislation that lands on top in the form of new initiatives. That's not a request to avoid more work per se. It's just a request to keep our work organized and keep our work focused in the directions that it already has been moving. We do believe that we have good education policy in place that has come through the General Assembly and we believe it's important to build any recovery efforts on what already exists and the strengths that are a part of those plans that districts are implementing locally and that are also being implemented at the state level. Our fourth guiding principle that we'd like to share is that efforts to strengthen and expand existing policy and practice initiatives should reflect the dynamics that have been revealed by the pandemic. Don Tinney again has some feedback to share with you on this concept. Thank you, Dave. And I'll start actually with what I mentioned before in terms of universal school meals and the school being a source of nutrition. It certainly was one of the brighter spots of the pandemic that we were able to provide. And I say we meaning the entire school communities including school bus drivers and food service workers to make sure that every child, every teen in Vermont was well fed since March. Another piece that has been accentuated by the pandemic has been the importance of engagement. We find that students who are engaged are the ones who are being successful. And it sounds obvious, but what we've seen in during the pandemic through virtual learning is what happens once students lose that engagement and it's difficult to bring them back into the fold, so to speak. So we have to really be cognizant of how are we engaging our students? How are we making sure they're getting to school and what are the activities as they're doing as they are there? And in part because of so many students who are spending half their time of their week working in the virtual classroom, we've noticed a greater sense of independence. And so we've always talked about independent learning and how important it is to be a self-starter. But we see that our students have learned a whole new approach to their independent learning. And I think I mentioned this the other day in testimony about how important all of those executive functioning skills are. Another sort of policy, if you will, or practice that has become obvious was this fall when most of our students returned in the hybrid model. Because of physical distancing, many schools had about half the number of students in a classroom. So we saw the direct impact of class size. Many of our educators reported how much they get to know their students, how it was so much easier to get to know their students more quickly than they ordinarily would because they only had about half of them at one time. Now they had them all of them for the week, but just the interactions when you have a reduced number has been real powerful for them. And it also is class size has had an impact on student behavior as well. And so one of the things that we need to keep in mind is the impact of class size on academic achievement. Thanks. Thank you, Don. Our next guiding principle is that state policy makers must allow maximum flexibility in local and regional use of monetary resources. Neil O'Dell has some feedback on this and I will share some opinions as well. Neil, go ahead. Thank you, Dave. And thank you, Senator Campion and other senators on the committee. All of us here today are looking at the possibility to use the federal funds consistent with the federal guidelines on the use of those funds. But we're also concerned that state interpretations of the allowable uses could run counter to the federal qualifications and could possibly constrain our access to and or use of the funds. And so we just wanna highlight here the flexibility is key as we attempt to fund the initiatives or the programs that would support the principles that we're discussing today. I would just add on that particular topic. This speaks to both local and regional decisions in the region where I am, which is the Southwestern, Vermont, Rutland and Bennington County area. You know, we have conversations quite a bit about accessing resources regionally about creating opportunities for students on a regional basis about using existing policy and levers to make different things happen. And our ability to do so can be constrained by the flexibility that's afforded with any funding that we might experience. So I will not ready to yet say that there's a silver lining about funding that may come through the recovery process, but there may be a silver lining with funding that comes through the recovery process in that local school districts and regional groups may be able to develop new concepts, new ways of serving students as long as there's appropriate flexibility baked in. If it's overly restrictive, we will face more challenges and not be able to take some of those new steps that might be on the horizon. Next guiding principle we'd like to share is that districts should engage with their school communities and keep them informed of their work related to the recovery process. And Neil O'Dell will share some more on this. Thank you, Dave. You know, I think this just highlights the role that school boards play in local communities as at the liaison between, you know, the school district and the community and the importance that we make sure that we maintain a dialogue between the two, not only so that school boards and districts can understand from their communities what it is that they need and what they're looking for, but also for schools to share the initiatives that are going on to let folks know that, you know, the issues are being addressed and that we are working on these topics. Thank you, Neil. The next guiding principle we'd like to share is that sufficient time, resources, and support must be provided for students who need to demonstrate a specific level of academic attainment in order to graduate or to be promoted to the next grade level. Bob Tebow from the VPA and Don Tinney have some feedback to share on this. Thanks, Dave. And thank you, committee, for meeting with us. I'm Bob Tebow, I'm the principal down at Leland and Gray Union Middle and High School in Townsend, and I guess I would like to just, you know, mention that as we talked about the learning loss that was highlighted earlier and thinking about how we're gonna address that. One of the complications of the high school level is thinking about for students who have lost access to earning credits or proficiencies in our system. There's been a lot of students who have, the term we're now using in the field is ghosted us and who have really disappeared and disengaged completely whether it's for economic reasons because they needed to work. And I can tell you that from my school, the six to 10 or so kids I could tell you about are all kids in poverty. Those kids have just not had that access to us. And so, you know, they have fallen further behind in their, from their cohort to be able to get to their diploma. So just thinking about how we deal with that and how we ensure that they have access is gonna be really important. And the creativity we're allowed to operate as we fix things out. You know, the grades back to like the industrial model of schools and how those are all artificial constructs and how maybe we need to think about more, more flexibly. Thanks Bob. And to pick up on what Bob just said, I think it's really important that we be truly student-centered. I think sometimes we bounce around that phrase a lot, you know, to be student-centered. And when it comes to providing sufficient time for our students to move forward and to get the credits, et cetera, that they need, we have to focus on what their needs are and not on what the school system needs, right? So we often hear a lot of conversation about grade level. Are they at grade level? Well, we don't, we're not born with any sort of biological grade level system within us. And, you know, so I think it's what's so important is that educators have an opportunity to really assess where students are and what do they need to move forward? What are those standards or those skills that they need to acquire on their schedule and not on some artificial school system schedule? And that's gonna take a lot of flexibility and it may very well, and I would expect it will require a one-on-one direct instruction because it does have to be that personalized sometimes. You know, and I think we have to remember that there are different paths of demonstrating one's achievement or level of mastery. And this, the pandemic has led us to see the value of having multiple pathways, the value of having alternative assessments and the value of truly personalizing education for our students. And I would like to just piggyback on the concepts that Bob and Don just shared with you because I think about the fact that, you know, we do have some high school graduation ceremonies, whatever form they will take that are coming up in about four months. And we will, as schools, be faced with an early decision point in the recovery process when there will guaranteed be students who have missed things that they needed to experience during the course of this pandemic and students for whom graduation may be called into question or at least graduation on the time schedule that we normally prescribe for that. We all know that Act 77, as Don alluded, has created the concept of flexible pathways. It's created the reality that students can acquire proficiency in different ways. However, we haven't ever really truly been tested on that. What happens when someone might not have what's required? We may have a whole new set of decisions to make and when that time comes, it will be really critical that time, resources and support that we are able to provide those things in a way that's logical and makes sense and takes care of students and prepares them for that next step as they go into their adulthood. So very important to us. Next guiding principle that we'd like to share is that a core emphasis should be on reestablishing the community of school and reconnecting every student to that community. And once again, we will hear from Bob and Don. Thanks. So obviously as Vermont's primary role, I can tell you that as we actually today is our day two of being live in person again, we've been remote since March until Monday. So I've spent a lot of time, that had to do with air flow and HVAC unit snack rack stuff. I spent a lot of time this fall, particularly visiting homes and trying to reengage kids. And one of the things I can tell you is that, particularly in places where there's pockets of no broadband or in high poverty areas and high rural areas, these students have been incredibly isolated. So I visited, so I'm Jay this morning about a student visited who literally lives in a tar covered shack. He has no hot water. He's got a wood stove for heat and certainly no internet and in the middle of the woods on the top of a hill. And it's a story I suspect is probably probably play itself out over a lot of our communities in Vermont. So this guy who's been alone and he's also happens to be a special needs student, has been remarkably isolated. His parent that he lives with works long hours and he's by himself with no real connection to the outside world, inability to zoom into classrooms in the fall and has been really, really disengaged. It's kids like this and kids who aren't that bad off as well. It's really important that we're re-engaging them in the school community and welcoming them back and thinking about how we do that in creative ways, how acts every seven can assist with that. And just thinking about that being an integral part of these kids' lives. Living in isolation in poverty and that's about half of my student body coming back into the building and what that means for us. So those are the kinds of stories that we see on a daily basis with kids. Thanks Bob. And I think as we often talk about school as a learning community. And as we move forward, I think we need to be talking about school as a healing community as well. As Bob pointed out, we do have important valuable work to do. And one of our main objectives, just as Bob talked about our truly, truly main objective should be to re-establish our school communities. Our students and families have experienced the isolation, the loneliness and the fear in the last few months and including sadness because many of them have lost so much. And when we talk about the students that have been marginally engaged or absent from families who may not trust the school system for any number of reasons. We often refer to some families as school phobic they may have had negative experiences as youths and they don't want to come into school. Those are the folks who really try hard to bring into parent conferences and you wonder how come they never are there. So we have to find the resources to figure out a way to engage those families so that we can bring all students back because as the fear continues to go up and that isolation continues to goes up it sort of intensifies the suspicion of the system. And we've done, as I mentioned to other committees we've done a lot of work with Dave Melnick over the summer who's helped us with our social emotional learning and our approach to trauma-sensitive practices. And he's pointed out to us that the common trauma symptoms we're seeing in our students and their families and that is to detach, to numb themselves and to disassociate. So all of those things are those as symptoms of trauma are going to be working against us, against our educators as they're bringing folks back. So we definitely need to focus and figure out how do we reestablish this community the learning community, the healing community to get reconnected and reacquainted. Thanks. Thank you, Don and Bob. You've heard the saying saving the best for last and I would suggest that we are saving perhaps our most critical guiding principle for last. These are all important but this last that we'd like to share with you is of critical importance and each of our association presidents does have some feedback that they like to weigh in on this particular topic with you. So the last guiding principle we have is school communities cannot be expected to navigate the state's uncoordinated agencies and departments to acquire the essential services that their students need. Utilization of existing and developing partnerships with local, regional and state agencies should contribute to the foundation for supporting the recovery. In regions lacking sufficient capacity among those local and regional agencies the state must guarantee targeted support in the form of financial and human resources. And just for the sake of process why don't we have Don, Neil, Bob and myself share feedback on that in that order if that's okay. Thanks, Dave. This is a critical piece and it's one that we talk a lot about the need for wraparound services or community schools or full service schools. And it's something we need to continue to work toward. I can say from my experience pre-pandemic in the classroom, one of the most frustrating parts of my job was to know that I had a student who was troubled in some way, needed support, needed counseling, doing the work of having, bringing in the school counselor, identifying the need for more services and mental health and being told, well, there's a waiting list at this counseling service. There's a waiting list here. We think we can get them to be seen by therapists in four to six weeks. And I'm just, as one educator have had that experience a number of times, we have to do a better job for our students. When they need services, whether it be for physical or mental health care, it absolutely has to be there. And whether it's dental care or other forms of care, we have to figure out a way to bring those services to the student and not let their poverty, not let the lack of access to a physician get in the way. So I'll chime in and just let you know, I kind of look at these principles as a little bit of an equity sandwich. We started out with equity as the first principle. And I really think that's this last one. There's a huge component of equity associated with this and maybe just some observations from my own local district. So I serve on the school boards in Norwich, Vermont, and also a member of the Interstate School District with Hanover, New Hampshire, the Dresden School District located in the Upper Valley. And I have to say what we have actually been back in in-person instruction since day one. All of our kids have been in the buildings that's elementary through high school. And I think a large part of us being able to do that had to do with our location. It had to do with our proximity to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. It had to do with the fact that several infectious disease docs, epidemiologists, pediatricians who all work at the hospital also happen to have kids in our school system and were willing to dedicate their time free to our school reopening plan. If we didn't have the benefit of that type of support, I don't think that we would be in the place where we are today where we haven't, I think we had maybe one day where we shut things down where kids didn't come in at one of our schools. We've had, I think, less than seven positive cases in our buildings. And we've managed to keep things open for in-person instruction since day one. And I think that was just because of where we live and the resources that we have available to us, which I acknowledge are not available to schools across the state. It's just a reality. The other point that I would add, too, is a lot of us have heard about the mental health issues that have been coupled with this and what we have found here in the Upper Valley is that while resources are constrained in that area, and I think a lot of areas could use additional mental health professionals, you actually can get it in the Upper Valley if you've got the money to afford it. It's incredibly expensive, but for those folks that are well-off and have the resources, the mental health counseling is available. Unfortunately, for those people that can't afford it, they are looking at a wait list or it's just not available at all. And so that's why I look at this final principle as a piece of the equity sandwich that we've sort of, I think, delivered today. Thank you. Yeah, I think you're going in a rural area not being in a hub. Bob, you're sort of in and out. Yeah, my internet is shaky for some reason. Okay, that's better, it's a little better. All right, yeah, so as being in a rural area and not having direct access to a hub where there is a little services burden, I do think that that is a challenge for kids. I think the emphasis on this principle for me is about ensuring that we aren't the ones leading this charge or we're working collaboratively with some of these other organizations, very often to schools who are affected by DCI, by mental health agencies to be on things. And we've been responsible for a lot. I mean, in my school, we've done dental stuff. We have counselors who come in and work billing insurance and our employees. Like we've tried all the creative things but it's always on us to do that leading and we need those other agencies to step up and work co-ordinately with us to do that. It just can't be us right now. We really need that cooperation. In having lived in Chittenden County and worked in the Northwest part of the state and now in the Southeast part of the state, I will agree that there is a great amount of inequity from place to place. And I know the Northeast Kingdom is another area that don't live there but I know that's another area that's had a lot of challenges around the mental health side of things. And we just need to stay to step in and provide what supports we need in those areas. I'd finally like to add a focus on social, emotional and mental health for students and give just a local example for you. So a year ago, just prior to the pandemic, my local district, we approved a budget that had funding included for three additional new school counselors in the budget. We had a lot of good conversation at the board level. We felt that it was appropriate. There were some increases in the budget that would account for that. Some tax increases that went along with that, that budget passed and we were feeling great. As we all know, the pandemic hit. All school districts began to look at their dollars in different ways. We decided not to hire those counselor positions for this particular school year because we wanted to hold onto the funds in order to protect taxpayer dollars and see where we would come out of the pandemic. For the current budget development year that will be voted on on town meeting day, we've added two of those counselor positions back in. They're still incredibly important. And we know that there are needs that our students have always had that will be exacerbated by the pandemic. Because of some internal just turnover, I actually will have three school counselor postings that will go out hopefully after town meeting day. I share this with you because even though I'm gonna have three postings that will go out for fantastic school counselor jobs, I'll be thrilled if we find one. And that's not to be judgmental about the types of candidates that are out there. It's just to say that in the region where I work in Rutland County, the candidates are not out there. Senator Hooker and Senator Taranzini know the area well, also know that in terms of what Rutland Mental Health is able to offer, they are an organization that works hard to help us navigate what we need to navigate. But lack of available personnel or turnover with available personnel create significant challenges. It's my belief that whatever the recovery process and duration looks like, the first chunk of time needs to be spent focusing on that reconnection piece, that social, emotional connection and mental health piece. I go back to my days as an elementary school principal and reflect on the fact that a good elementary school teacher spends about the first six weeks just building routines, just getting to know kids. It's not about math facts and drilling on reading. It's about building the community of school and that's where we're going to need to start with the recovery, but to do that, the people will need to be in the right places. So when you hear Neil Odell's examples about how his region was able to navigate accessing resources, but then when you hear about an area like in Southwestern Vermont where we just don't have the available personnel in the spots where we need them, that's where it will be critical that the state play a role in making sure that financial and human resources are allocated so that there is an equitable approach overall to how we start this process of recovering. At this point, I'd like to thank the committee for hearing us and of course we would love to respond to any questions you may have for us either collectively or individually. Back to you Senator Campion and thank you. Thank you, thank all, many thanks to all of you for taking the time to put this together. I know it was asked of you in addition to your regular duties and responsibilities. So I very much appreciate it and I'm grateful that we do also have a quorum of the Health and Welfare Committee here since they're in the chair, the center lines. There's so much overlap. If I may, I just would like to, all of this is incredibly helpful and I think we all probably have many questions. Is there a, I'd love to get to a point where we could go to Senate appropriations and say this is what's needed. I mean, what I would love to have a bit of a plan if you will, you know, this is summer's coming and there are going to be successful summers and probably unsuccessful summers. And I'm not sure in my mind, I can imagine what a successful summer might look like for a student that hasn't been in school might need to regain that sense of community as well as some academics, some general support. And then I have in my mind what an unsuccessful summer might look like. So I'm wondering if out of this you may have come up with some ideas, some concrete ideas and funding needs. Senator Campion, I think I'll start with a pessimistic response. And then I'll let one of my colleagues, John, perhaps some more optimistic for you. One of the real challenges to answering the question that you just asked is what we still don't know. You know, so as a superintendent responsible for leading the district, things I need to know such as when will we be out of the pandemic? When will teachers and school faculty and staff be vaccinated to the capacity that we can re-engage full bore in our schools? When will our students all be back into a school environment that looks more like what we're historically used to? The challenge that I see is with those three variables which are huge variables that are time sensitive and have obviously their own fiscal impacts, it is really difficult to project out the, therefore we will need this because we don't yet know what the finish line is. But that's not to make an excuse that we shouldn't be thinking about our planning for that. So I'm hoping that one of my colleagues would like to jump in with an extension. Sure, if I could just add and you know, I'm not sure what the chair of approach would say but we know that we have about $128 million going toward education, one time funds. We know this isn't business as usual in terms of the situation out there. There must be some ideas even in the most pessimistic scenario of if this were to continue as is, remote learning, you know, students again from what I've heard from people, there are students that you haven't even seen possibly in months. There has to be some kind of concrete idea around how to re-engage people or not there must be. I hope that we could get there. I hope that we can get there. Bob? So yeah, I'm just imagining so at my level, again, there's small rural school. Yeah. I'm gonna approach this in a lot of different ways but one of the things as far as re-engaging some of those kids who've ghosted us, I'm imagining a team of people, a couple of teachers, a social worker with some clinical skills, you know, a traveling road show if you will to go out to these homes and get these kids and get them back in the schooling environment. And once they arrive in the schooling environment that might look very different. It might not be a traditional setup for kids. It might be more of like a adult learning kind of a thing but within our building, you know, they might be doing it part-time and working. And I mean, it might be a whole different, I'm talking high school obviously at this point. But yeah, I'm thinking of like a staff that I don't have right now, a team of people and multiply that by every high school in the state. And that's a starting place. And of course, South Browington and CBU are gonna need a lot more people than I am to do that work. I don't know, but I think that's a starting place for me and I'm not the expert on the elementary so I'll leave that to someone who can speak more to that. But I mean, for me, like that's a lot of money. It's a lot of staff. And again, I don't know that I have the capacity to find those people here in my calling of the state either. I decode Dave's concern from earlier. Don, what do you see as a successful summer for students? Well, I think much of it depends on where we are with community spread in terms of what we can do. So I'll preface that. I think that it would be successful if we brought back students into a play-based activity if we wanna call it summer camp. I think it's really, really important that no child experiences, an academic program is punitive that you must get up to grade level before you go back after Labor Day. So, and what I'm hearing from our members is the need for our students to experience joy. And that's across all grade levels. They've been experiencing stress and anxiety and they need simply to be kids again, as we often say. So finding, developing a play-based, activity-based summer program, we know that we have many have been in place for years. And do we, how do we expand those? How is it, do we have the time to create them? I don't know. And it doesn't, it should not necessarily be sort of a remedial education program. And I think that's the sort of thing we definitely want to avoid. And it could be more of a career-oriented or vocational skills-based program for the older students. I know our tech centers run phenomenal summer programs usually. And I think we could, that may work. So I think that the summer, and again, it's difficult to know where the virus is going to be. But I think it's that, back to what we've talked about in terms of building community, having fun, being together is an important part. From a bit more academic, I think I come back to this often and that is the importance of the one-on-one instruction or small groups, always one-on-one. But there's nothing that replaces working with a student shoulder to shoulder, whether it's reading, math, science, whatever the academic area is. And in many ways, the student understands that that educator is there just for that one part. He's, you know, my teacher's here for me. And I think that goes a really long ways and in a stylistic relationship. And as Bob said, those sorts of things are expensive because you're talking about, you know, personnel costs, you're talking about transporting students there. But I think it's exciting to think what it could be and really, you know, hoping that the virus cooperates with us so we can do some of those things. I think the other piece of the summer should really needs to be how are we all gonna go back when we go back in a full-time setting and what needs to happen in terms of our workforce and returning community. You know, we often talk rightfully so about the stress and anxiety our students have felt. Our educators have felt much of that same stress and anxiety and how, you know, we talk often about, you know, self-care. Well, what does that really mean and what resources do they need and the time that our educators need to talk with one another to process what they've experienced. We know that we make meaning through storytelling. Our students and our educators gonna have the opportunity to tell their pandemic stories as a way to make meaning from it and as a way to move forward, you know. Thank you. Actually, if I could just add on to that, so I think, you know, one of the things that when I was referring to my thing earlier is about the really thinking about the fall is Don talks about the staffing of and how people are dealing with this. Like I will tell you that my staff's been working their tails off for a very long period of time. They're burnt out, they're stressed, they're anxious. All this, there's now, there's talk about retirement funds and other things, there's a vaccination talk that's out there. I mean, there's a lot of stressors on these good lives. I think that we're gonna be able to get a bunch of teachers to come in and work in the summer as well, I think is something to think about. I don't know that we're gonna get a lot of folks that are gonna need that time to really decompress after the last year and a half. So I just want to point it out there as well. Yeah, good point. Other comments, questions? Yes, Neil. Yeah, I'll just piggyback on what the others said in reference, so you had made the comment as to, what does a successful summer look like or what does a non-successful summer look like? And I think I guess I would be cautious about what it is we're trying to achieve, what we're promising folks would happen, right? Versus the reality of what we're actually gonna be able to accomplish knowing that this is really a long-term effort and I would be hesitant to send the signal either explicitly or implicitly that we're gonna solve a lot of these issues over this summer, because I don't think that's real. And I want to make sure that we set expectations appropriately here. Yeah, no, that's a good point. It's long-term and yeah, Senator Hooker. Mr. Yonks has a comment. So why don't you go first? I just have questions about some of your principles. Sure, I just wanted to share Senator Camping to the question of what could a successful summer look like? I'd like to go back to my comments earlier about mental health supports and the human resources to navigate that. I couldn't specify the mechanics, but if I had a dream scenario, what it would look like would be that mental health specialists in the form of counselors, therapists, et cetera, deployed throughout the state with the appropriate funding to be assigned to work with school districts almost as a triage type of team or a counseling provision type of team to help school districts and principals get a sense on where our students really currently get a sense on where the students with the most challenges on the social-emotional level are, work with those families during the summer to just try to build that foundation back up to prepare again for a hopeful, normal return in the fall. And that's the kind of concrete idea I think I don't want to speak for the whole committee, policymakers need and appreciate, putting together some kind of team, even if this summer, again, I think if we were to, I think parents, I think people in general want to see some kind of, some kind of plan, some kind of action. I mean, it's trying to put some kinds of supports there, even if it is, and I'm not saying minimizing this, but it is those socializations, what kinds of things can we put together to start to rebuild in a way? Senator Hooker and then Senator Taranzini. Thank you, thank you. So we keep talking, we keep talking about the human resources that are necessary. And we've heard from Mr. Tibble and from Mr. Yonks that we don't necessarily have all the people in the workforce that will need, whether it's counselors or teachers. Mr. Tini, you keep talking about the number of student-teacher ratios and how important it is to have those smaller groups. And where are we going to get these teachers, especially if there's a lot of talk about retiring and the mass retirements and stuff? So I'm looking for recommendations on how to attract that type of workforce. And then just one other comment with your sixth point, your sixth guiding principle about keeping the community engaged. I'm afraid that once, God willing, the pandemic is over, people are just gonna kind of forget that, oh, well, we've had this terrible situation and they're not gonna know what the schools are trying to do and how this process has to have time to work itself out. So your comments about keeping the community engaged are really paramount to letting them know that school may not look the same and we're working on it. But going back to my other question, do you have any recommendations on how we can attract people to the positions that we need them in? Good question. Well, I believe superintendents are ultimately responsible for hiring. So I will defer to Mr. Yance, but I do think we really need to look at our working conditions. We do need to remember that we were facing some shortages in specific areas, science, math, special education, the international languages. So I do think that that problem is real. And as Bob pointed out, the recent news of pensions is probably will lead to more early retirements, unfortunately. So that is an issue that definitely must be addressed. I think Vermont remains a very attractive place to work. We have a great reputation nationally for our schools. We're always ranked in the top five in terms of academic achievement. And the question is, as a state, is it attractive to bring new educators into the state? But it's something that we really should address. I think another area that's very important to address, and I know Burlington Education Association has started to address this explicitly, is that is how do we recruit and retain educators of color? And how do we make our communities more appealing to our educators of color so they'll wanna come here and wanna stay here? But I readily admit it is very much a challenge. And how do we get creative and making it easier for folks to make the transition? So it's a tough job, but I think that people will, as we see with a lot of folks who are going into the sciences and nursing and medicine, as a result of this, perhaps we'll see younger folks deciding as education is a great career choice as a result of this. Senator Taranzini. Thank you, Senator Campion. I also turned my screen a different way so you don't see my arm as much today when I turn off the mic. So I just wanted to thank, I think this has been really healthy and good discussion to the panelists. I've said it many times now, I'm the father of four, two of which are in elementary school now and I have a third grader who my wife and I lose sleep about at night thinking about what this virus has robbed from her third grade education. As great as the school that my children go to is and as great as technology is and as great as the teacher that my third grader has that I had in fifth grade, there's nothing like being in the classroom with your friends and learning and eating in the cafeteria and so on. So the mental health component of this is something that I think about a lot because I don't think that we even realize yet what type of emotional trauma that some of these students have faced over the last 11 months is. I know that we've had sleepless nights here with my kids who have heard something on the news or radio about the virus or about someone locally that we know contracting the virus and are they gonna make it or are they gonna pass away? And so there's so much fear and anxiety and so much distraction for an eight year old right now that I just worry about their future. So I'm glad that we're talking about mental health because it's so important for these kids to be able to express their feelings and talk about it with experts. I can listen all day to my third grader as her dad but I don't have the specific skills to be the counselor and that person that they need to talk about or talk with. So thanks again for talking about the mental health aspect. And before I turn it over to Senator Lyons I just want to add to that. I wonder if that there is some kind of strategy there. In other words, how do we educate parents? How do we tell parents, you know very few of whom are mental health professionals here are signs, here are signals here are things that you should be looking for. Here are strategies to help you during the summer and to help to get your children ready for next year whether it's again, everything from socialization. I don't quite agree with Mr. Tinney. I do believe that things there are going to be deficits that I think can and should be looked at and addressed. I think we have to measure things. If we're going to manage things we have to measure things academically. But there might be a role here for all of us to be talking if things stay as is. This means parents could have and use tools. Are there resources that we as a state should be putting together that some parents can access online that others can have dropped off around some of these kinds of things. Senator Lyons. Thank you. Thank you all. This is a lot of information. You've done a lot of good thinking. So I'll let you know from the from our perspective and our committee this morning I spent some time again talking with the commissioner of mental health about this issue. And I know that the governor's task force is working on this. So mental health folks, AOE and others. And it'll be interesting to see if there's any commonality and the recommendations that they make with yours. I've also been spending time talking with I don't know if you know who Louis first, our pediatrician at the UVMMC and just talking about how primary care kids primary care and mental health supports can work together with schools to make a difference. And there's a strong interest in making that happen. But you really do raise some critical questions about our system doesn't have the right. We don't have the right system in place to accomplish the goals. If I think about kids and the stresses that those kids are under that we're all under. I mean, there's no question we're each under a significant stressor or set of stressors as a result of the pandemic. Everyone needs to have something some support, some talking through. We all need about a four week vacation. That would be my first recommendation. Everybody gets a month of August off. I'm serious, okay. You don't think I'm serious, but I am quite serious. I think that people need a break. They need an opportunity to be out and doing something different and then start school after Labor Day. I'm sorry, these are silly things to say, but in some ways it might be thinking about something different. And as you're talking about doing something different in schools, I think, wow, start the school off with meditation, start the school day off with yoga, have teachers be a part of a new development program that enables teachers to understand all those warning signs that Senator Campion is talking about and then to work with parents. There's a lot of opportunity I think here to build a stronger system that is trauma resilient. And I said crazy things, but I do wanna go to your third bullet and your last bullet. So your third bullet says to build on existing policy and practice initiatives. That's the foundation. But then in the last bullet, you talk about that you can't be expected to coordinate. And I agree that our state programs are sometimes quite unfathomable. Yet having mental health support, having new support services built into schools, you know, I get a little bit frustrated when we have to reach out to our DAs and our SSAs to do everything. I think a lot of what happens as school is so remarkable and the teachers at schools are so excellent at building kids. So don't completely give up on yourselves. That's all I'm saying. And obviously we do, Senator Hooker knows, we talk about this all the time, the workforce is a mess, just not there. And we keep working on that. So any help you can give, my last comment is, it probably won't ever be my last comment, but we have a lot of great retired teachers. And look at that resource, hello. And then they would love to get engaged. Once they're all vaccinated and they're probably vaccinated before the rest of us. And then, so I call a little teacher core, right? So you get all those wonderful retired teachers engaged and helping and loving children. We might see something neat. So a new set of volunteers. I'm just throwing out some thoughts, but I do think integrated system needs to be in place. And I'm voting for a full month off with pay and no school until after Labor Day. But we look forward to seeing that bill. Mr. Thibault. Yeah, I just want to respond to a couple of things that I heard. So going back actually for Senator Campion to you first, the idea about educating parents, I think is a really great idea. I want to just issue sort of a, one of those classic warnings, like it, I don't know that that would school responsibility. I wonder if that would be a DCMENT responsibility. I don't know about extra things on the plate at the time, but the idea that I just maybe ought to come from, from somebody else. And going back to Senator Hooker, is your question about some of the specifics around staffing. And one of the things I was going to mention is the streamlining of licensing. I had to hire a science teacher mid-year who had a license in New Hampshire. And still I had to go through a whole process around provisional licensures because she once held a license in Vermont, but it had expired. So even though we had a valid license in New Hampshire, the reciprocity wouldn't work. There's a lot of challenges to that that were, that could be, I think, streamlined to help us get people back into those classrooms. And so through the licensing side of things. And then the second thing, just to jump off of what Senator Lyons left us with, I think that there's a bill out there somewhere. And I don't have Jay speak to it a little bit about how to get retired teachers and retired administrators to be able to be back into the workforce in a way that doesn't penalize them from their income standpoint. I don't know if Jay, if you can add to that a little bit. Sure, there's no bill that I'm aware of, but we wrote a proposed bill a couple of years ago and in light of the retirement system we're in now, I would, that should get some consideration. I believe I shared it with this committee when I first met with you, but I can send you another copy of it if you don't have it. I've also shared it with hell said. And essentially what would happen is a teacher who has already retired is fully vested and fully retired, could come out of retirement, get the regular teachers pay for that year and still get his or her retirement. And they would pay into the retirement system at the same time. So what happens right now is we hire long-term subs from other states or we hire people off the street and they work for 30 days with no license. And then they have to leave and another person comes in for 30 days and then another person comes in for 30 days. So to me, that would be a common sense approach to try to address this. There's no cost to retirement system because we would have them pay in and the caveat would be they could only work one year in the same position. So I couldn't just retire and make a career out of being a retired teacher working in my old school. I'd have to go to different schools where the need really was there and the AOE would help determine that need. I'd be glad to send you folks all copies of that. I get a copy of it sitting on my desk behind me. To me, it's a no-brainer. Do it for three years while we recover. You know, you made the point about the teachers that are out there that are so talented. A lot of them are just like, you know, I can't do it. I'd like to do a long-term stuff for one year and cover this first grader teacher who is out in maternity, but I can only make so much money and then I lose my retirement. So if we could mitigate that concern, there's a lot of options that are out there. And what's really ironic is we have retired principals and teachers come all the time, especially principals. I have them in my classes all the time when I'm teaching principals about the Vermont context. Half my class is new principals. The other half are people that came from Massachusetts, from Hampshire and New York that are working on a second retirement. They get their full retirement and they're making their full pay here. You know, we could do something real simple so that Vermont educators could do that and fill those needs, those districts where we can't find a superintendent or we can't find a principal or we can't find a special ed teacher. You know, we could easily do that and not hurt the system. And we could even make those people pay a higher percentage on their payroll tax towards retirement if we wanted to. I mean, there's a lot of options that are there. I also know when New York City was going through a teacher shortage, I'm not sure when exactly but I can forward this. You know, they opened up who could be in the classroom. You know, you did have retired this, retired that, you know, people who not only had had professions as academics, but scientists, doctors, attorneys and brought in a lot of different people who always wanted to teach, who always really wanted to do this kind of thing. So, Mr. Yance, did you have something to say? Yes, I did. Thank you. I just wanted to respond to a few things I heard and actually share just a couple of personal examples. First, Senator Lyons, your August idea, I'm gonna go to my board right after this meeting and say Senator Lyons said so. So I'm gonna see if we can get that wheel turning. You're gonna get me in trouble. I'll probably get me in trouble first. So don't worry about that. Senator Hooker, you made a couple really, really key points. You know, the personnel dilemma is the struggle and we're talking right now about possible solutions. I do wanna to highlight, I think we all understand this, not to be critical of the situation, but the pension dilemma is a big dilemma. Personal example, I came to Vermont mid-career. I'm fully vested in another state. Obviously plan to vest here in Vermont. If I were looking to come to Vermont right now, in this moment as an experienced teacher, experienced administrator, et cetera, seeing the dynamics of the pension question and knowing that that's going to have to be solved somehow, I would not make that move. And that is very, very concerning. You know, the concept of retaining people that we currently have and attracting people from outside. We all love living here because this state is what it is, but some of the other details do have to line up in order for that decision to be made by someone. And to echo Don Timmy's remarks about focusing on school employees and teachers of color, not only attracting but retaining, creating a culture where this is a safe place for people who are not from here and do not look like everyone on this particular call to come and teach is something that we need to pay significant attention to locally and as a state. And then finally, Senator Taranzini just wanted to respond. You shared the challenge of your third grade daughter. And I just wanna build on that. So I have two sons. One is a sophomore at UVM. The other is a senior in high school currently and my senior in high school, we were having a conversation a few weeks ago and he was asking questions about the end of the school year. Luckily he's got a dad who knows a little bit about how the school year is playing out. But he verbalized to me as he was questioning graduation, he said, you know, Dad, I've just become accustomed to expecting to be disappointed. And that struck me. That struck me first like, wow, you don't wanna hear a 16 year old kid say that. And then it struck me, wow, it's interesting that he's got that perspective on the world. You know, we all have to learn in life that life is not always fair. Things don't always work out the way we want them to. And we have to have the resolve to push through that. So the challenges that we know kids are seeing, there may be some resourcefulness on the other side of that that pays dividends. But to get back to a point I made earlier, first focus on mental health, triaging what the needs are and where they are and being able to identify like, hey, Dave Yance's kid, you know, Dave's got that. They're squared away, but this student over here is struggling. And we wanna make sure that we get the right supports, resources, education in place, you know, just focusing in that way, I think would serve really positive dividends over time. Senator Taranzini. I currently have a screaming baby Senator Campion. So I hope you can hear me, but. Absolutely. To Bob, is it T-Bolt? T-Bolt, yeah, T-Bolt, thank you. I'm sure this is a bigger discussion for another day, but to what Bob said about trying to get a teacher from New Hampshire here and the licensure and all that, that to me seems like almost common sense that we would wanna find a better streamlined process. I think if you're certified as a teacher or a nurse in another state, it should be a pretty easy transition to come to Vermont with your certifications rather than having to jump through a bunch of hoops. So just my thoughts, I'm sure it's something we can talk about another day when we have more time, but I appreciate you saying, we're bringing that up. Yeah, I think it's a great point as well. I mean, some kind of compact. I think we have, Senator Lyons, you may have been involved with this, the nursing compact that I think you got through a few years ago. We're working on that in committee. We passed it last year now, COVID kept it back, so we're passing it again this year. But I was gonna ask if we have anything like a teacher compact. So as former chair of the Vermont Standards Board for professional educators, I do know there is an interstate agreement and it is, depending upon the state, it is easier from who is in that interstate agreement. Well, I don't think they call it reciprocity anymore, but that's what it is. And I don't know the situation Bob is describing in terms of New Hampshire, but there are a few hurdles for some folks, but I think the route to take would be to ask somebody from the Standards Board to come in and address those issues. Because I think one of the things that we, we have to be careful of, it's really important to bring folks in, it's really important to fill these positions, but it's also really important that we maintain our professional standards. And that's what's appealing, I think of retired educators because we know they know what they're doing. And so we have to just be cautious. There's, and really to look at how do we prepare educators, particularly for those in mid-career. And since I have the floor, I just wanted to compliment Senator Lyons on her insights and her brilliance about talking about yoga and wellness. We really have a lot of evidence that shows in schools where they implement yoga and other forms of wellness activities, behavior issues, decline in academic achievement increases. So once again, Senator Lyons has presented probably one of the best ideas of the day here on the Education Committee of the Senate. Thank you. As I should note, in case the press is listening is usually the case. In fact, I don't know if anybody else wants to compliment the good Senator or if we should just do it periodically or if we should, Senator Lyons, do you have a preference? It depends on what you just want to see as the front page of the Burlington Free Press above the fold. I don't usually see the front page of anything. Thank you, Senator, and thank you, Ron Tenning. Senator Perslick, please. Yes, thank you, Chair, and thanks for all this great thinking that you guys have all done. One thing that I've heard would help, but I'd like your opinions, either the witnesses' opinions or any other Senator's opinions, is some kind of loan forgiveness for teachers, either specific teachers that we'd be looking for or counselors or whatever staff or expertise we need in the schools. If we were to say, we will forgive your student loans if you come and work in either specific districts or just come working for mine. How helpful do you think that would be? And also I just would like to say that I like Jay's bill there about the allowing retired teachers to do a year. I think that's a great idea. I can address that, Senator. I think the loan forgiveness will be extraordinarily important. I think it would be a way to attract new educators to the state if they knew that they were to come in to vote of five years or whatever happens to be. It also is a way not just bring people in from outside, but to have to retain our Vermont students who have gone through the state college or UVM system. And we know our young educators are really struggling with their student loans and it's getting in the way of them staying in the profession. It also is a way to stimulate the economy. If you get rid of those student loans, now I have an option of buying a first home, buying a new car, whatever happens to be. So I would really encourage pursuing that as a real plan. Is there any loan forgiveness right now for educators in this state? Nothing at any level. Okay. Okay. Senator Hooker, please. I have a bill actually, a loan forgiveness bill that hasn't been introduced yet, but it's in the process that certainly could act as a vehicle for this. I also have one for doctors and nurses, but these are things that I know that some of us have been thinking about and hopefully we'll go on. I do have another comment with regard to attracting people of color. We've talked a lot about this in the past few years here in Vermont. And I know that a couple of communities have put out what they call a declaration of inclusion. And the hope was that that declaration of inclusion would be something that would be adopted by every community. And I'm just wondering if the school boards and your associations would see a role for you getting involved in asking select boards and governing bodies in your towns to consider this type of resolution. I think it would go a long way towards making Vermont an accepting place and an open place and a place where people would feel safe. So just something to think about. I know that Pittsburgh and Brandon have already adopted it and we were hoping that Rutland County would, other towns in Rutland County would do it. And I'm thinking that it could be something that could go around the state. The gentlemen who started it have approached the equity caucus and they thought it was a great idea. Can the schools get involved? I mean, these are hearts of the community and for the school boards to go and ask their governing bodies to consider this I think would make an impact. Thanks. Mr. Yannis. Thank you. First Senator Hooker to your question. I think that philosophically what you bring up for many of us as educators and school leaders makes absolute sense. I would want to express that based on some of the things I've seen during the course of this particular year that could be a divisive topic in various communities. And I would have some concerns about how that might play out in different places and whether that could actually be detrimental in the long run to what would be attempted to be accomplished with the effort. So fully behind that conceptually but I think there's some strategy that needs to go into that. Thanks for bringing that up though. I appreciate the idea that there should be strategy and certainly a conversation, a discussion in the community would be something then. Just thinking that if the schools were behind it if the school boards showed that they had an interest in it then it might be something that would move forward. You bet. And if you don't mind Senator Campion you might be the right person to ask this. You had mentioned earlier just about the funding that is available and what the General Assembly needs to look at in terms of how that will be distributed. Do you have any sense on what that distribution looks like in general in terms of how the funds break down and what is theoretically targeted to local districts as opposed to state agency, et cetera? I mean someone on this call may know more. I hate to misspeak. So we are having a meeting tomorrow at noon. I know the chairs of Ed as well as the money chairs to sort of better understand that and how we might use these funds. And it sounds to me, what I'm bringing there so far is they're, and please add or subtract from this but the idea of loan forgiveness, the need for families to, when I think of the things that I wanna make certain that we are working to prevent during the summer, hunger, depression, we wanna make certain that students, young people are safe. We don't want, is there a need for an increase in suicide awareness? How do we make sure that we start to address some kinds of academic deficits? What are the kinds of things that we should be telling parents to look for signs and signals of these kinds of things as well as what a summer might look like and what kind of investment would that take from agency of education, DCF, school districts, et cetera. So those are certainly licensure and I think making it more streamlined and perhaps opening the door more to teachers, people that want to teach. So those are some of the things that I'm gonna mention tomorrow just broadly and I think this committee will continue to have this conversation. But I guess I'm looking for all of you, to all of you again, what's missing? I don't want us to look back and say, hey, as much as we possibly can, gosh, that post, and we don't even know if it's gonna be post pandemic summer, it would have been great to do these other kinds of things. And I'm just asking us all to kind of think as much as we can about what we're afraid, what we should be putting out there on the table for funding needs and options. Neil, you had your hand up and then Jay. Yeah, and I just briefly to go back, I know that Senator Hooker had asked about whether or not the school board's association was possibly working with other select boards and such regarding educator workforce diversity. While I'm not familiar with the specific items that you were talking to, I just want to let you know that we have, as a VSBA board of engaged in equity training and we do have one member of our group who has actually worked with a group of New England counterparts on educator workforce diversity program. And so we are looking at those areas and do intend to fold those into the broader equity work that the SBA is engaged in at the moment. Regarding the, one of the difficulties I think that we have when you asked the question, how much is this gonna take? I do know, unfortunately a lot of us on the school boards are just finishing up our budgeting process and getting ready, stuff ready for town meeting. So we haven't had a lot of opportunity to think beyond just getting our budgets ready for next year. So we haven't had the opportunity to really dig and have those discussions about what it's gonna take yet. Yeah, good point. Jay. Yeah, just a couple of things. One, the mention about loan forgiveness, there is a program, a federal program that some of our teachers in the state of Vermont do get some relief from. I don't know if it's just for special education and it's only for working in high poverty districts. And the reason I know that is my son's a special ed teacher and he's teaching in Missiscoe and it's a high poverty district. And he's been able to write off quite a few loans because he's a special education teacher there. And before that, he worked in Richford, another poor district. And then in terms of things to think about, Senator Campion, you've talked a lot about the academic part and I know you understand that social-emotional mental health part has to come before and with that, but that we still need to think about the academic part. The most effective strategy we have to help students academically is high quality in-person tutoring. So that's where using college kids, having high school kids, tutor elementary kids, high school kids that really know what they're doing, tutoring elementary kids, having retired teachers come in to work directly with kids who have learning gaps and instruction, having teachers, teachers that are already teaching, work with kids in the summer, after school, enrichment type camps, those are all high-leveraged strategies on the academic end. Great. Senator Alliance mentioned it and in a way we talked about it a little bit, but again, back to what families can do and is there a way to talk to families about meditation, about yoga, about just getting their kids outside, just that constant and these are some of the questions that AOE and DCF I think could work with Senator Lyons' committee and this committee around again what we might do for children during the summer. Mr. Francis, you have been in this work for a long time and you are always, my experience has been you've always had good ideas. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on any of this? Well, I participated in the development of those principles and the point I'd like to make is those principles are as much for us as they are for you. Those are gonna be disseminated to our membership so that they see what the guiding principles are. And the second thing I would add is that the variability in the systems across the state really doesn't necessitate the opportunity for a lot of flexibility. So we're waiting to see what the agency comes forward with with regard to their direction, but local communities are gonna need to respond to these principles and most significantly the children in those communities in ways that they can do it in a focused deliberate way ASAP. Terrific. Any other questions or comments? I mean, from this committee I feel and from this conversation enough to share with our colleagues and we will have the agency in as well to hear some of their ideas and see how there's gonna hopefully be a coming together. Have you Mr. Fannin been in contact with the agency? Have you been working? Have you been communicating with the agency? So many of us here since the start of the pandemic, really every Friday meet with the Secretary of Education. Great. So that's been ongoing. Some of us on this group as well, smaller number worked on the reopening guidance document and have periodically gathered thereafter. So it is ongoing work, but I do know that sort of the recovery, I'll call it that, is work that has just started at the agency. And we are part of that, but I think we need to all dig into it a bit more. Today's conversation has been great. And it's just that an initial conversation. And I think certainly the, a lot of the resources from DC are going through, we believe through the agency. And I'm looking at Jeff Francis, you mentioned that the other day on one of our calls. So I think that we understand the realities of that federal money that, maybe we've got to collaborate a bit more with the agency rather than always looking to the Ed fund maybe. And so there are ways to do this and do this well, but a lot of the questions that Dave Yance mentioned, we just don't know a lot of what we need to know, which is really, it's a sad fact, but it is a reality and we can't escape it. But we do know there are resources, as you've mentioned 128 million I think, that we should maximize the good use of. Yeah. So to your very good point, and everyone has said it all through this conversation, there is a lot that we don't know. How will we find out those answers? I mean, is there, when will we realize this? Is there a process that we're missing as we're looking to summer and next academic school year? Or is this more sort of an evolutionary process that, but you know what I'm getting at? I mean, there is information, but are we missing an opportunity around kind of assessing or taking a pause and how do we start to understand some of these things? We don't want to wait for the bigger problems. It sort of goes back to what I was saying earlier. How can we educate parents of signs and symptoms of some mental health issues? What are some of the things that we need to be doing to better understand what we're dealing with? Well, I think one of the things, so for example, Don and I met last week with Mike Smith. And we have heard through the Friday group and other people that in the Northeast Kingdom, there's a shortage of sort of the mental health system is in a state of crisis. How are we gonna address kids who have mental health crisis in the Northeast Kingdom if the system that's providing the service is itself in crisis? So it's sort of the oxygen mask thing on the airplane. First, I've got to put mine on. We've got to put in place the system that will be able to help those kids in the Northeast Kingdom or in other parts of the state. It sounds like in Neil's neighborhood, maybe they've got a bit more robust system in place. That's great. We got to try to figure out why that's doing well there and copycat it up in the Northeast Kingdom. Just go up North 91, it sounds simple, but it's not. I know. Yeah. So it sounds like the systems are in place. Yeah. So it sounds like we do have information. Like for example, the fact that the Northeast, we know that the Northeast Kingdom is in a mental health crisis. So we have that information. Now we need to come up with something. I don't know that personally. I've heard of it. Okay. Okay. Senator Lyons, I bet we'll know something on this. Right. I think that's probably related to the designated agency that's there and the difficulty that they've had. But look at this is an issue across the state in terms of not having sufficient mental health counselors, not having substance use disorder counselors, social workers at different levels. It's really, it's a significant crisis. And then coupling that with low pay and high turnover. And it gets even more concerning. So, I mean, you've really identified a key issue, which is why, you know, fixing what we're in the middle of and helping kids get out of their social isolation and their sort of the place that they're in might take more than trying to fix the workforce, the mental health of the designated agency workforce problem. So, you know, I think that we're, that some creativity is going to have to take place because you're absolutely right. They're just our insufficient people. And then we see a crisis that we're in the middle of this huge crisis. All right, Mr. Tinney. I just wanted to echo the need for the personnel which is definitely there. But one of the questions that we always have, you know, as folks, you know, classroom educators, in where to start, right? I mean, we just have the entire landscape. And one of the things that we know is a real issue we addressed a little bit this afternoon are those students as Bob said, you know, those who have ghosted the school, those who are missing. And I'm not, I don't have any official agreement on this, but I do think we ought to perhaps can decide that is our number one issue. That, you know, that's where we begin because in solving that particular problem, it addresses many of the other areas of concern. So because it deals with the social-emotional issues, it does deal with the equity issues and then also the academic issues. And if we take a regional approach to that and we can, you know, start with the planning and say, okay, what is it that we do need to answer your question? You know, what do we need to bring these folks back into the community in a very real way? And I think one of the questions that I do, I have here is, okay, so where do we start? Because you can't do it all at one time, right? And that just may be the priority that we focus on. And that will take all of us, right? From school board, superintendents, principals, and educators. By them, as Cheney, you're talking about the students that we, if we were to go to every school, every school principal or superintendent or teacher, who are the students that we know? We all know the ones that we've kind of lost isn't the right term, but you know what I mean? We're not in connection with this point. Right, I mean, and, you know, historically, we simply refer to the truancy list, right? Like I said, okay, so if a, and these are students who are not engaged, they're not engaged virtually, they're not coming to school. And, you know, we need to figure out, you know, how can we bring them back? And what, I mean, to begin is Bob eloquently explained the story of one of his students, where do you start? And that may be through human services, not necessarily the school, but that's, that kind of, it really forces us into the team building that it's gonna require. And being in a sort of a mobile unit and going out there into the community, you know, up those dirt roads, finding those students and what do they need? And then what is their reentry in the community going to be like? I think that that's a great challenge. And that also is something we haven't done before in any large scale way. But it also is a way to address those issues of engagement. It also forces us to really look at, okay, let's get serious about what it means that for social emotional wellbeing. What does it mean to really care for someone? And I think that we need to begin somewhere. I think those are the kids who perhaps is the, you know, I don't know if the proper phases are in crisis. And whether or not we're free of the virus in the summer, I think it's something we can begin thinking, you know, we need to start doing. But I don't have the answers for that, but I do know we need to come together for the sake of those students. Yeah, absolutely. Mr. O'Dell. You know, as we go through this discussion, I think one of the things that's obvious to everyone, but maybe it's just worth saying is, I don't know to what extent you've got the ability to influence this but get the vaccination out there, right? I mean, if we could get our population vaccinated, if we can get to some level of herd immunity, then a lot of the things that we're talking about here can actually happen. We can have kids get together. We can have them play together. Communities can start to get together. Schools can get together. We don't have to worry about the physical and the social distancing, like that interaction, that person-to-person contact. And so, you know, any opportunity that we've got to get the vaccine and to get it out to our population as quickly as possible might be the one thing that we can really focus on. Good reminder. Thank you, everybody. Again, I realize this was on top of everything else that everyone is doing. And it's the start of a conversation and we'll have the Agency of Education in also and we'll know more after talking with money chairs tomorrow to get a sense of how they, you know, dollars available if we want to give some specific, I think what they're thinking is there's a way to give specific instruction through these dollars legislatively, you know? And so, you know, what that might look like. But, you know, back to Mr. Venn, I would just say, you know, in terms of we don't know, and I know we're all struggled with this a little bit, but it seems just that a quick search, a lot of people are out there assessing throughout the United States what the problem is and what we might be facing. And so, I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel on some of these things. I think researchers from every graduate school to physicians, everybody is really starting to hone in more and more. So I would say, you know, another thing that could be helpful to us is, you know, it is helping us to curate some of this research, get it to us, some of the ideas from it because it's, you know, it's happening. People are identifying what a post-COVID world might look like. Please, go ahead. So I agree that they're starting to be, you know, as Jay pointed out, a couple of academic research papers coming out on this, but I would also just caution us that there are a lot of private entities and they're probably well-intentioned, but there's a lot of federal money out there in the education world and they are ready, willing and wanting to access that federal money. And I'm not saying they're not trying to do good work, but I just want us to caution that that's, I get hit with a lot of emails and I'm not even, you know, in a place where I can contract with an entity to provide service to a school, but I'm in an education world and so they, I don't know how they get my email address, but I get a lot of emails from companies saying I can teach your kids, I can educate. Sure, sure, absolutely. And I'm thinking, I think we all know, you know, in this meeting that there are reliable sources out there and unreliable, you know, people that or organizations that we've looked to historically that have provided either, you know, CSG, National Council of State Legislatures, what they are putting out around a post-COVID world and what educators are going to need to be dealing with, I think that's reliable. And I think my point is, I think, I agree that we're still kind of figuring it out, but we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Other people are with us and some states are a little bit ahead of us as they, you know, answering that question. This is what we're going to be dealing with and I just think we have to keep reminding ourselves and partnering with other states and organizations that we trust as we move forward. That's fair enough. Yeah. Yeah, again, I can't thank you all enough. Look forward to continuing this work together. It's, we've been at it now for quite a while. Committee, we're going to take a 15 minute break and I should let you know that we have a new policy and that is, I guess, when we are Jeannie will be kind of shutting us down, if you will. We won't be live streaming and then we'll be coming back up, but still stay on your computer screens. Everyone else, you're welcome. I know Mr. Nichols, you're going to stick with us for a little bit and just talk about literacy, which we'll do for a little while and everyone else, again, are most sincere gratitude and look forward to continuing our work together. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.