 We've got quite a few things to cover today, so I'm going to keep my comments relatively brief. As we talked about over the last several months, while COVID isn't going away, we have so many more tools and more experience to manage it. So as the solution for the situation continues to improve, it's important we continue to work to reverse the harms resulting from some of the mitigation measures we put in place before we had all these tools. This includes learning loss, as well as social and emotional ramifications for our kids, the strain on our educators and health care workers, the mental health and substance abuse challenges that worsened during that pandemic, and the emotional turmoil everyone has gone through after many many months of uncertainty and fear. All of this is still with us, and I assure you addressing these impacts is a high priority for my entire team. This all happened even as frontline workers in health care, schools, mental health and substance misuse providers worked incredibly hard to help everyone through the pandemic. The fact is some of the steps we took from remote learning to deferred health care and a general lack of human connection have been difficult to overcome. But we need to do whatever we can to reverse these impacts. Secretary Samuelson and Secretary French and their teams at human services and education have been working to help stabilize these systems. Today they'll both share some more about what they're focused on and the goals and measurements for recovery. Dr. Levine will also provide an update. Before I turn it over to them, however, I want to mention that Commissioner Sherling is here with us today, and this will be his last press briefing, at least with us. And as we announced, he's moving on to take a position at UVM and he'll be greatly missed. Mike, I want to thank you for your service and your leadership during an incredibly difficult time. As I've said many, many times, because for monitors we're willing to do the right thing. And we had a very talented team working day and night to keep them safe. We led the nation in our response. And you were an essential part of our team. So I'm going to give Mike a chance to say a few words as well. Commissioner. Thank you, Governor. It's a privilege to have a moment to just say a couple of words as we transition to this next phase of the pandemic in particular. It's been an honor to serve for the last six years. I want to in particular thank the governor for his confidence in me and give me the opportunity to serve both in commerce and public safety. Thank the teams. Both of those organizations for monitors should know they've got really tremendous people working tirelessly for them every day. And then beyond the two organizations that have been most closely associated with the broader team managing the pandemic and the extension of that team doing everything from warehouse operations to public information, while simultaneously doing all the work that is so important to running state government on a day to day basis has really been truly impressive to watch. And it's been an honor to play just a tiny role in everything that's happened over the last six years. And in particular over the last two and a half is the most challenging time I think in in recent memory has has swept through Vermont and the world. So just wanted to say thank you to everybody and how much I appreciate working with you all. If you would have told me six years ago that I would be little melancholy leaving state government, I probably would have had a more skeptical answer, but it really has been an amazing privilege. And just thanks to everyone again, Governor. Thank you for for the opportunity. Now we'll have Secretary Samuelson come up and give her report. As I get started, first and foremost, I want to congratulate and thank Commissioner Shirley. You've been a strong leader in the COVID response and invaluable collaborator and a mentor for many of us. Your service during these challenging times has undoubtedly contributed to our nation leading response and has saved lives. So thank you for the past two years. We focused our full attention on limiting the severe outcomes from the from the pandemic, specifically the health outcomes with the tremendous uptake of vaccines blunting the focus of COVID in our individual lives and a widely available therapeutics to treat individuals who are at greater risk for illness. We have reached a new phase in the pandemic where the risk of severe disease and death is much lower. The new tools we have allow us to move away from the COVID mitigation measures to a time when once again, we can connect with our family, friends, neighbors and community. We are now able to look forward to the events like birthdays, weddings, farmers, markets, festivals and simply having tea or coffee with a neighbor. These are important steps for our overall mental health and well being of ourselves and the rest of the Vermonters. Dr. Levine will address this in more detail during his remarks. But as the governor said that at the top of our press conference, we are transitioning from from responding to the pandemic and to have to a focus on the COVID related impacts of our mitigation measures. These have impacted our mental health, substance use, housing, child and family well being and the stability of our health care system. Emerging from the pandemic, we are focused at the agency on three areas of concern. First, we must address the increase in the incidence of substance use and acute mental health challenges that we are seeing day to day in our communities. Second, we must further stabilize our health care system and its workforce. And third, we all recognize the need to support the new and growing challenges facing families and children across the state, including housing insecurity. To start, what we know is that what we measure is what we will prioritize, improve and change. And as we move forward with recovery and revitalization, we will use key indicators and metrics to gauge our efforts. For mental health, we will be following the number of Vermonters who are seeking access to mental health crisis services. And we will also measure and work to stem the tide of deaths related to suicide and drug overdose. We were able to make a difference in these key measures before the pandemic, and we are beginning to see signals that they're declining. But we have lost ground over the past two years. The pandemic has strained our health care system. As we move forward, we will monitor the number of beds in different types of health care facilities that are staffed and ready for Vermonters in need, including beds in hospitals, mental health facilities and long term care. In addition to available beds, we will be looking at the number of people in our hospitals and emergency departments who are waiting to discharge the skills, nursing facilities and other appropriate health care providers. In addition to the issues that we faced with our with our health care system, we are also looking at important response in our housing in our COVID related work. We've been successful at existing more more households than ever in finding permanent housing. But there's still work to be done. We are going to have to we are going to continuously track the number of households that are currently in the emergency housing program and their ability to move to more permanent housing solutions. Our goal at AHS is to support Vermonters and strengthen our communities. For each of these areas, there are efforts who are already underway. For example, Vermont is joining the nationwide suicide prevention lifeline by implementing 988 later this summer to address the health care workforce, the provider retention and recruitment program authorized by s what by s 11 and signed by the governor will begin distributing funds later this month. And there have been unprecedented investments in housing. Monitoring these key metrics will be will be a tool as we assess our programs and work to improve our response to the long term impacts of the pandemic. AHS realizes that the work ahead is critical. And using the type of these types of frameworks will help us deliver services better than even before the pandemic. Secretary French, I'll now turn it over you to discuss the revitalization and recovery work in the agency of education, and including the focus of our partnership on child and family well being. Thank you, Secretary Samuelson. Good afternoon. I also would like to thank Commissioner Sherling for his leadership. So we reflect on our experience managing the pandemic in Vermont and particularly in education. I can say I don't think there was a single department or agency that was not involved in supporting our schools and want to thank you for your leadership and your partnership with the agency of education was critical for our success. I'm going to talk a bit about recovery and education. I think it can be understood as a time bound focused period of activity. Since our recovery efforts are largely funded by federal COVID relief dollars that need to be spent by September 2024. Challenge before us now is to ensure that these one time funds can not only address the immediate needs of students, but also can ensure that they have a long term impact on improving the quality of our education system. We will use the third last third or the largest tranche of the federal funding that came into Vermont for education relief. That's about 280 million to fund our recovery efforts. Like the other federal dollars, 10% of this funding of the 280 goes to the state agency of education. The remaining 90% goes directly to the school districts. So as we have all on part of the challenge is coordinating the use of state and local funds. His coordination is now described formally in our state recovery plans. The state plan we worked out last spring with the legislature and that plan was ultimately approved by the US Department of Education last December. And now every single school district in the state has a education recovery plan and those plans are posted on each school district website and also the agency of education on its website has links to all the local plans. As we have done throughout the pandemic, we intend to use the state funds in a strategic manner to guide and focus the use of local dollars to ensure maximize maximum impact. Want to use an example of this last year. We created with state dollars a school facilities improvement project at the state level to provide leadership to help locals coordinate and spend their dollars on improving facilities. We made significant progress last year on things like upgrading HVAC systems in schools as a result of that collaboration. Our recovery spending will both the state and local levels will now follow a similar pattern. We have immediate and long term goals. The immediate goals are in two areas. First is student academic needs, particularly those needs as a result of learning loss from the pandemic. And second goal is to address the impact of the pandemic on the social emotional needs of our students. We also have some long term goals back to the idea of using these funds in a strategic manner to improve the quality of our education system after this focus period is over. We have two long term goals. The first one is to ensure that each school district in the state has strong instructional systems in place. These systems include things like curriculum development, local assessment planning, needs based professional development and a comprehensive system of student supports. Those four systems that I just described are not new in Vermont, but they're not consistently implemented across the state. And particularly with the workforce challenges that we're seeing in education, frankly, in all sectors of our economy, it's critical that every school district have strong systems in place that will allow us to manage transitions of staff. Our second long term goal for the education system speaks to the integration of education and social services with commissioner or excuse me, Secretary Sanders will just refer to particularly in mental health and youth services and integrating those services with education. When this two year recovery period is ended, we'd like to see a better integration of these services in the landscape and every region of the state. We already have a strong integration of these services in some areas of the state, but some areas need to be strengthened and expanded. But the immediate goal before us now is to maximize the use of federal dollars to address student learning loss and social emotional needs of students. State level investments in this area will include investments in summer and afterschool programs, literacy professional development for staff, new data systems for school districts, expanding remote learning capacity, including tutorial services, grants for community schools and investments in mental health supports. A key investment will be making to address the social emotional needs of students is a wellness program for staff. We will be announcing a partnership with V high and its path program to expand staff wellness programs across the state. We do need to ensure the school staff are well so they can address the needs of our students. To guide our recovery investments and to promote coordination between the state and local spending efforts, we're establishing metrics to monitor the work in this area. State level metrics will be general in nature so we can identify patterns and need among all school districts in the state. Local metrics will be responsive to the needs of individual students in schools. Since we have had limited time to engage in this work, essentially a two year period, we immediately decided we did not have sufficient time to create new metrics so we're going to rely on the ones that we already have. We also decided that we would just pick a few metrics and not try to measure everything. To monitor academic needs at the elementary and the middle level, we'll be using our state level assessment information currently in SBAC for English language arts and math. So we'll be looking pretty much exclusively at those two subject areas which are essentially foundational to the education experience. These data in SBAC in particular only start at grade three. So we will be making investments with districts to help them improve their assessment capacity in the primary grades including pre-K. At the high school level, we've established two metrics to monitor student progress towards college and career readiness. The first high school metric is the percent of students scoring a three or better on AP exams. A score of a three is usually what's necessary to receive college credit for an exam. Second high school metric pertains to CTE programs. We'll be monitoring the percent of students in CTE programs who complete their programs and also the percent who obtain their industry credentials associated with their program. To monitor the impact of our recovery efforts on the social and emotional needs of students, we'll partner with the Agency of Human Services to use a variety of metrics including kindergarten readiness, attendance rates, truancy rates, percent of children with behavioral, emotional, mental health, or developmental conditions by age, the number of children under nine accessing crisis services, and the number of children under nine served by designated mental health agencies. We have all of the metrics I just listed in hand now, but we are hoping to generate more granular information through the school district educational support teams. This is one of the system strategies that I described previously. We would like to see a more consistent approach to education support teams in every school district in the state. These teams will be the point of interface between state and local recovery efforts and the Agency of Education will coordinate state recovery resources with school districts through these teams. These are just some of the highlights of our recovery plans, which actually is a fairly complex project. The Agency of Education website will have a more detailed and comprehensive description of this work as it unfolds. I wanted to provide this update today. I did share this work with school districts at least a year ago, but more recently we made a formal announcement to them and we have several planning structures that we're working collaboratively with school districts or other education stakeholder groups, but I also wanted to use this opportunity to basically call the action for all Vermonters in this work. This is a very complicated moment, uncharted territories in so many ways, but like any complex project the first step is to break something complex down into smaller parts and for each of us personally and collectively to think about what we can offer to help. Recovery work in education is not just something the state or local districts can manage on their own. We will certainly take the lead and responsibility into organizing this work, but we'll need your help as parents and community members. We're also interested in identifying community partner organizations who can provide additional support and what will need to be a statewide effort. So that concludes my remarks. I'll now turn it over to Dr. Levine. And before I begin my comments, I'll add my words of admiration regarding Commissioner Shirling in my mixed emotions regarding the fact that I wish him only the best in his position at UVM, but will regret not having the opportunity to continue to work with him in state government. It's amazing how intertwined public health and public safety are. That was one of the great pieces of enlightenment I got when I entered my position and realized that one of the people at the top of my speed dial was going to be the commissioner of public safety, whether it be experiences we had with the opioid crisis or with rice and incident or other natural disasters or most recently the pandemic. So to say that the teams at public safety and leadership of their commissioner were integral to our pandemic response is really a significant understatement. So thank you very much, Commissioner Shirling. Today I'm going to provide information on our current status with the virus, vaccine developments, testing and the transition to recovery. I'm happy to report that as of the end of last week, our statewide COVID-19 levels were considered low and our current data shows the situation continuing on this very positive trajectory. To determine this, as you know, we look at new cases, new hospital admissions and the percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by patients with COVID-19. Currently, the seven day average for hospitalizations is 35 and for ICU is four. There has been only one death to date in the month of June. Emergency visits with COVID like illness are also decreasing as our levels based on the wastewater surveillance data we are receiving. We know that COVID-19 is still here and indeed many of us still know someone who currently has the virus, but the data is showing the virus is causing less severe illness in Vermont, which when it comes to protecting the health of Vermonters is our main focus. So the biggest upcoming news on the vaccine front is of course children under five. This is the last age group that has been awaiting the availability and protection of a vaccine. Both Pfizer and Moderna have submitted data to federal regulators and there are still a few steps of review that need to happen before the vaccines become available in Vermont, starting with an independent FDA committee that's meeting today and tomorrow. The information we have to date indicates the vaccines will get a favorable review for their efficacy and their safety, but we will await the final FDA decision. If the CDC then determines these vaccines are safe and effective and recommends that this age group receive them, vaccines will be available to kids before the end of June, possibly as early as the week of June 20th. I want to remind parents and caregivers that most vaccines for children under five will be given at pediatricians offices and other health care practices. We know that pediatricians are a trusted resource for parents and they can answer questions and provide a familiar comfortable setting for children to be vaccinated. Their expertise is critical to helping caregivers understand how vaccination is the safer way for children to build protection against severe illness from COVID-19. And I thank these health professionals for this and all they do for our children. If you have questions about your provider's plans for offering the vaccine, please reach out to them. We'll also offer some limited vaccination opportunities for our WIC families in addition to some walk-in only clinics around the state. The walk-in clinics will be listed on our website, but unlike for previous vaccine rollouts there will not be any health department registration. For more information, visit our website healthvermont.gov slash kids vaccine. Later this month, the FDA will also be discussing getting an updated COVID vaccine ready for the fall for the general population. But I encourage Vermonters to get the boosters they're eligible for now. For anyone age five and up with an uncompromised immune system, that means one booster. For anyone age 50 or older, two boosters. However, anyone age 12 and older who is immunocompromised should also get a second booster. Now for testing. I've already spoken here about our testing transition, but want to remind Vermonters that our state run testing sites will close at the end of next week, June 25th. This has been an incredible emergency response over the past two years, but these sites are no longer a necessity as our tools to prevent COVID have grown and evolved. At home tests now represent the quickest, most convenient testing option. And they are widely available at pharmacies and online. They are covered by many insurance providers. And you can also order from the federal government three rounds of tests by visiting covid.gov. We are encouraging Vermonters to continue to pick up at home tests from our sites in the coming days to have ready to use in case they develop symptoms. This includes antigen and lamp tests, which are similar to PCR. For monitors who cannot get at home tests through pharmacies or insurance after June 25th can call the health department or their local health office for assistance. Anyone looking for other types of testing can check with pharmacies or a health care provider. Using at home tests when you have symptoms and staying home when you're sick will greatly lower your risk of spreading covid-19. As we've seen the role of testing is changing in other areas as well as it is no longer required for air travelers coming from a foreign country to enter the United States. As the CDC is also focusing on preventing severe disease. So this is why at home testing is especially critical. If you test positive and are at risk for a serious outcome from covid-19, reach out to your health care provider as soon as you can so you can be connected to the available treatments. Finally, transition to recovery. covid-19 continues to be obviously disruptive to some of our lives where we work, go to school or care for loved ones. And that is still difficult and stressful for most of us. It's even harder for people at high risk due to age underlying medical conditions or systemic inequities. But we can now see covid-19 as a disease that we have the tools to fight through vaccines, rapid at home testing and treatment. Testings that that is rapid and convenient allows for quick measures to stop the spread. Being up to date on vaccination and having effective treatments available for those at highest risk is how we reduce hospitalizations and severe outcomes. We know what kind of steps to take depending on our own personal comfort level and risk tolerance around things like using masks or avoiding crowds or travel when transmission may be higher. What we have been witnessing is development of public health response in real time and honestly from the historical perspective at unprecedented speed. And while it may look like we are slowing down or rolling back, that is not the case. On the contrary, we're now able to take gradual, sustainable steps forward, addressing any aspects we've since learned how to address as the science evolved and planning the future. And as was mentioned already, we're expanding our focus beyond COVID, working to reverse some of the setbacks we've all experienced, the negative impacts of living in a pandemic for the past two years. Recovery from COVID includes improving our social and emotional well-being, focusing efforts on addressing substance use and mental health, preventing debts from the so-called diseases of despair, food insecurity, a rise in eating disorders, improving the academic potential of our kids, assessing and reversing the impact of the pandemic changes in our own health behaviors that can have long-term impacts on our health. None of these challenges will have simple solutions, but I know that we are all focused on in looking forward to helping keep our monitors safer and healthier together. I'll turn it back to the government. Thank you, Dr. Leene. Well, now I'll open up to questions. One year to the day since we hit 80% vaccination and lifted all of the restrictions. Since then we've had Delta, Omicron, the A2, here we are today. For you, and I guess kind of opened up to others that they want to weigh into, what have you learned along the way in the last year? What have you learned? Oh, well, there's so much to change, right? From a very, very beginning. We had no playbook. We didn't know what we were getting into. Since then, as Dr. Leene has said, from an historical standpoint, we've come, we've made great strides from vaccines being the most significant to begin with. And then all the treatment that we have available, we've learned how to, in the beginning, as you might remember, we didn't know even how it was transmitted, much less how to counteract that. We thought it was surface, surface transmission of the virus. So we were cleaning everything in the beginning. And again, we just come so far and learn so much in putting forth mitigation measures and trying to protect Vermonters. And again, I can't say enough how much I appreciate the attitude of Vermonters, the willingness to listen and to work with us to provide for the best response in the nation. So it really does bode well for us as a team, but us as a state in how far we've come. Dr. Levine, anyone want to add? We're smoking a lot on this, so I'm going to limit myself to 30 seconds. We've learned a tremendous amount about the people around us in Vermont. And the very cavalier always in our past about saying what a wonderful place this is to live, how great people are, how great our communities are, but boy, I think the pandemic really proved that to be more than true. Second thing is, I actually measure the pandemic as five pandemics, beginning phases when we knew absolutely nothing, then when we had the UK variant and the Delta variant and the Omicron variant and now the BA2 variant. And the reason I say that is because every time one of these new variants occurred, it was a completely different strategy and management plan. And that created in itself, not only the fact that science advances so quickly and our understanding can advance, but it also creates transitions. And transition times are the most uncomfortable for people. It makes them the most anxious. They remember what they just did before and why aren't they doing it again. And it merely creates the need for abundant messaging and communication and being very transparent. So those are some of the pearls I'll impart today. Just to follow up, would you say that COVID is endemic right now? I would. Yeah. Is the have we all arrived at endemic? No. And that's okay, because that we are all in a transition to endemic. It's one thing to say is the virus endemic, but is the way we live our lives. Everyone is thinking all the time about what they do in ways they never thought before. And looking towards the future that doesn't have 100% certainty to it or anything like that. And just looking to where we are right now in the present and how different many are trying to behave compared to the past, but also how uncomfortable some are trying to behave differently than they have in the past. So we're all in a transition phase and we need to cut each other a little slack and just sort of be appreciative of that fact and treat each other civilly and respectfully and understand that person A maybe at this point and person B at this point and person C is maybe never leaving the house. And we just have to sort of work with each other in that way. I want to echo what the governor and what Dr. Levine have said that we've learned so much about the treatment and about some of the mitigation strategies that we were necessary in order to stem the spread of the virus and the consequences of it. But I think the other thing that we've learned is the impacts that the mitigation strategies have actually had on Vermonters and Vermonters lives. Specifically we've talked a couple of times this morning about the fact that isolation, the inability to plan and to get excited about things have had a significant impact on individuals mental health and well-being. And I think as we move forward it's a lesson that we have to learn and it's a call to action for Vermonters that it's those small things. It's reconnecting with a neighbor. It's planning an event. It's going to the farmer's market. It's having tea with someone who's still feeling socially isolated. It's those sorts of things that will help us move forward and give us the tools that we need to begin to respond in our recovery and revitalization period. I think that we can't forget that learning as we move forward. I think Secretary French was going to add to that. On that same theme to your prompt, Gal, that I was thinking something Dr. Levine often says is we need to be humble in face of the virus. And I think reflecting on like today's summary of recovery, this is the third time we've tried to pivot the education system towards recovery as sort of a testament to the need to be humble. So after that first traumatic spring where we shut down our schools overnight, we ended up in a pretty good place around graduation and we're looking forward to opening schools in the fall, particularly with the advent of vaccines being on the horizon. And then thinking about doing recovery over that holiday period that first year and only finding that to be a very challenging moment in schools through the winter period. And we made it through that spring. Again, looking forward to as we do in school, we look forward to the new school year with optimism and hope only to encounter Delta. And, you know, then of course, managing Delta this fall and then arguably our most difficult moment in schools with Omicron. And every single time we were able, we had to keep putting off recovery because we just didn't have the capacity to manage the public health mitigation inside of schools and shift into thinking about proactive sort of stance in the future. But I think, you know, that that history points to a cyclical nature of the virus. But there for me there's been a through line, particularly since the fall. And that through line is the risk keeps going down. You know, the public health risks from the virus keep declining. And to Secretary Samuelson, Samuelson's point, inside of human services, we've always been trying to balance the public health risks of the virus with the social risks for the mitigation strategies. And as that will through line for me has become increasingly clear in terms of the risks of the virus from a public health standpoint declining, we have to increasingly put more effort on the social policy aspects of the risks. And they're very real, particularly for our students. So those are the two takeaways. I don't, you know, as folks are looking forward to the fall, I don't see that cyclical piece being on the radar. It's really about this through line of risk decreasing and us really getting a common commitment to address the mitigation of the educational risks that our children have been exposed to. If you don't mind staying at the podium for a second, just to clarify the funding you mentioned, the $280 million for the two year recovery short and long term goals, it's all bundled into the 280 million. Right. What I'm talking about is the ESSER program, which is the primary source of COVID relief for education. ESSER is the elementary secondary emergency relief fund. Vermont has received a total of 430 million through this program in the last two years. This last trancha funding, which is the largest of the 280 came out last spring under the American Reinvestment Plan Act. That's the funding that we are now utilizing, essentially, to engage in this two year period on recovery. Okay, thank you. Yeah. I have a question for Dr. Levine, too, if I may. On the Department of Health website, the last surveillance report posted was from June 1st. It seems the report wasn't posted last week. So on June 1st, the statewide community levels were categorized as high. So that's what I came into today's thinking. So you're saying now they're low and should we still be expecting this report to come out every week? Yes, and that report is available on there. So we've heard stories like you just told me. So the report I quoted from is on there. Let me just give you the three pieces of data from it so you'll know. In terms of new COVID cases in the last seven days, 125 per 100,000. Weekly case count 785. Those are all decreased from previous. New hospital admissions, 5.6 per 100,000. And percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by patients with COVID, 2.53%. These are all firmly in the low category. OK. And heading into summer where we say, you know, people are outside gathering. School is out. Camp is starting. All these things. What is your level of concern as far as, you know, outbreaks are concerned or a potential spike in cases? Or is there a concern? Right now, very low level of concern, to be honest. BA2 seems to be have done its job in our population, if you will. It seems to have passed through. There are two other variants that are being followed nationwide. BA4 and BA5. These are making up an increasing number of the percent of cases nationwide. My last look, it was about 15%. In Vermont, we don't know the percent, but we have seen them. Just very low numbers. Unclear what that impact will be in the rest of the country of those two variants. And unclear if you've had Omicron, BA2. Are you susceptible to BA4 or BA5? They don't seem to be making a huge difference. They seem to be causing sort of that lower level peak that we've seen in BA2. So right now, if my comments didn't say as much, I'm encouraging all the things you just said. Get outside, do things, and interact with one another. Wonderful. And to keep you in the hot seat for just one more question, you did address needing to address substance use disorders and folks kind of, we've seen that rise through the pandemic. Can you explain your take on the opioid prevention sites that in the bill the governor vetoed as far as looking into getting those types of sites in Vermont? Why do you think that that may not be a viable option in the state? Yeah, I mean at the outset obviously, you need to keep in mind that what's happened with opioid overdose that's is always an ongoing tragedy, not just in the last year or two years it's been going on for many, many years and that everyone those who are advocating for these sites or not is interested in working to reverse that trend and save lives. So the broad theme is harm reduction. I want people to understand that prior to the pandemic and that last year before the pandemic, we were showing significant decrease in our opioid overdose death rate and that's because we've had a whole array of strategies that have been very effective in the harm reduction realm whether they be Surringe Service Program access statewide including mobile expanded Narcan distribution which of course is a cornerstone fentanyl test strips as part of what we call harm reduction packs that are available statewide and of course more recent bill that was signed last year on buprenorphine decriminalization for which we're now collecting data to see if that's had any impact. So harm reduction is a form of prevention and we've been very, very actively working on other forms of prevention in terms of our youth and young adults whether that be school counselors whether that be prevention coalitions across the state whether they be after school programs and summer programs you name it and those have been actually successfully expanded during the pandemic as well. The literature around overdose prevention sites is beginning to increase but still about 80% of the literature is from two sites in the world Vancouver and Sydney which I would posit are different than Vermont and whether the sites have been shown to have validity in terms of they do what they are said to do in the populations tested is one thing. Generalizability to places like a rural state like Vermont is another thing and the challenges of using sites like that as a major strategy. So we are going to continue to continue all of the strategies that we've been using and knowing that we are a rural state with dispersed population and services it makes it more challenging to envision how these sites might be successful. Certainly during the pandemic one of the reasons for the increase in overdose death rate is isolation. It's a common theme we've been repeating here today as a root of many of the unfortunate events that happened during the pandemic but isolation when you're injecting drugs can be very very lethal when fentanyl is present in over 90% of what you might be purchasing and you might be alone and not have anybody around to resuscitate you and going to an overdose prevention site was probably the furthest from a person's mind during the time in the pandemic when they were operating much more in a solitary way. So that's unfortunate. I know the Governor has something to say about the actual components of the bill and I'll turn it over to him. Well again as Dr. Levine said we were focusing pre-pandemic on the four legs of the stool prevention treatment recovery and enforcement as well and they're all components that were somewhat successful and we think focusing on what we know is successful is the best strategy at this point because we exit the pandemic. So we've studied this and I'm sure that there are going to be more studies in the future. The opioid council studied this didn't think it was a good idea the health department doesn't think it's a good idea and I don't think it's a good idea. So we're going to focus on what we know works. Governor earlier today there was a school shooting threat in Canaan. I guess my question for you is seems like a recent you know it's a trend where a couple weeks ago there was a threat made in Montpelier. You know for students and teachers that you know kind of distracted at school you know just nervous about the possibility of these school you know shootings what is your message to them and I guess what are you guys trying to do to help the mental health of these students and teachers and maybe Secretary French also might want to speak on this as well. Yeah there's a lot of apprehension and we understand that we all feel it as well trying to get through the end of this school season a lot of copycat type of situations and the number of threats are up but having said that we want people to say something if they see something so just because there's more threats doesn't mean we don't want to hear about more situations because that's what's gotten us through safely when we had the Fairhaven situation if not for that young woman who came forward because she saw something we might have had another Parkland on our hands so we want to to make sure that people feel comfortable reaching out to us or to the school officials or public safety and tell us if they see something so that we can address it I think that's the message I put forward and we're doing a lot of the work again what we're talking about today with recovery and paying attention to some of the emotional issues that the kids are facing and teachers and educators and and so forth so we're all hands on deck we understand the issue and we're just we want to meet the need anybody else Secretary French yeah just to piggyback on the governor's comments this has been a you know challenging several weeks to say the least with the Texas shooting Vermont does have a very strong robust school safety program but there's always we can always do more in the last year in particular we've made a significant investment and threat assessment training for for folks that hasn't been universally adopted by folks but it can lead to increase reporting which to the governor's point isn't necessarily a bad thing so those those that reporting piece is critical we also know that most of our districts if not all of them have some form a school safety plan and that that was a result of some work that took place a couple years ago we upgraded facilities and so forth I think going forward we'll probably double down on the threat assessment that appears to be a national trend as well we're having some internal conversation about to what extent that should be mandated for folks and not just be a voluntary participation I think also we want to go back and take a look at the school security plans and we know districts have them in place but we haven't really gone as far as to qualitatively sort of assess the quality of those plans it is challenging to do that to a certain extent because the plans are a function of the unique resources that each community has you know what kind of law enforcement who are the emergency providers and so forth but we think that would also be some worth from effort going forward so just another question oh you want to go sorry no it's it's another question is for the governor it's one thing that you can talk about this yeah I'll be really brief and there's work going on on this topic constantly I'll just add you know the governor said the core message if you see something say something I just wanted to emphasize that by saying over the years I've been to a variety of different kinds of events where we end up uncovering a witness or someone who says you know I saw something it didn't look right I didn't want to bother you you are not bothering anyone by calling and reporting anything that looks amiss so reporting anyone either at the school or in local public safety officials just get that information out there and we'll connect dots if there are dots to be connected yeah I was gonna just ask also this weekend there was a march for our lives rally in Montpelier and there were several speakers including congressman Peter Welch that are you know at that want to see gun reform want to see a ban on assault rifles I was just curious what your response would be to those speakers who want to see those gun reform changes yeah well I think they're speaking more on the national level you might know we we took some major steps just a few short years ago and it appears that they have some measure of agreement on the national level and in the senate in particular and I I hope they move forward with that and we're encouraging them to do so they probably won't go as far as what we did here in Vermont but all the steps we took I think should be replicated on a national basis go to the phones kind of start with Lisa Loomis though I know she might not be available Lisa if you're there go to you all right we'll come back to Lisa at the end to check we'll move to Chris Roy Newport Daily Express we'll move to Erin Patanko VT Digger hi um I think this is a question for Dr. Levine I um I've been looking at data from the health department actually showing that uptake of the second booster has been relatively low I think about 38% of seniors who got the first booster have gotten the second booster shot even though it's been recently recommended by federal agencies I was wondering if you could comment on why you think uptake of the second booster has been this low and if you have any messages for people who might have been like on the fence or in procrastinating on getting a second booster shot yeah thanks very much for highlighting that it's a topic I frequently highlighted these press conferences we've done very well with the percentage of our population getting a first booster when you compare it to the nation but that sets the bar a little low and I've always maintained we could do even better with the first booster never mind the second booster and it's been very nicely demonstrated that that first booster the effect against serious illness is maintained for a duration of time it does wane like all types of immunity but again the first booster is the most critical but we certainly encourage people to get the second booster I think what's happened is a little bit of booster fatigue and it's just like part of pandemic fatigue overall where people are sort of saying look I got my initial series I may have even got my first booster and I'm kind of done for a while and many of them are hoping that there will be a new vaccine that they can then take on a yearly basis that will be more effective than just getting another booster of the same vaccine they've already gotten a few times so I understand that and can empathize with that but I do think that at a time when there's a lot of variants circulating many of whom are causing illness at very high rates as we've seen with BA2 that people owe it to themselves to protect themselves against the worst outcomes and the way to do that is getting the booster I think they know inherently that they still have a finite risk of getting ill from the virus even if it's a mild illness but again we want them to be protected from those more severe outcomes so that is the message I would be giving people today and certainly if you have not gotten a first booster there's never you've never run out of time to do that there's still plenty of booster availability there are still sites around the state obviously the medical practices around the state are all offering this as well so take advantage of it did that cover everything you wanted me to Eric yeah I think that was good thank you Hi Governor I was going to ask you about summer tourism and the tax revenues and but what struck me earlier in this discussion was it feels like the administration and Dr. Levine and it feels like not that you're doing a victory lap on COVID but the expectations that there will not be another spike as there was in the first two winters you know there was almost no viral activity last summer no fatalities and then we had a obviously a very bad surge starting in the fall and going through the winter is wondering why it seems that you and Dr. Levine are so confident that we're not going to have the same kind of spike starting in a late fall yeah I don't I think maybe there's some misconception as to what our level of optimism is I think I believe we were talking about right now and through the summer I think that's the a low level of risk at this point we're seeing our numbers drop the number of infections as well as the number of hospitalizations and so forth so that's our we're comfortable at this point in time and don't believe that we're going to see a spike at least in the next couple of months but but I would suspect that come fall when we start to go back indoors there will be another variant I should say those numbers will increase it's just like the flu when we talk about the endemic the flu has different stages of infection and that will increase so I don't want you to I don't want to give you the impression that we don't we think this is over and that we won't see any increase in cases because that's not the way I feel and I'm going to let Dr. Levine answer as well I agree with everything that was just said but again you know the federal government is basically saying there will be 100 million cases COVID come fall to winter I'm certainly not going to disagree with that I would like to be more optimistic but at the same time with the virus not being eradicated from the planet Earth we will see more renditions of it my hope though is again that we will have a vaccine in the fall that covers not only the earlier versions of COVID but also versions as late as Omicron so that the ability of the next variant to have what we call immune evasion meaning it will really still make a lot of people sick even though it may not cause serious illness will be reduced just because the vaccine has a lot more to it and the population will have more immunity based on the numbers that have already been through Omicron and BA2 etc so yes we should be optimistic in the near term but doesn't mean we should be pessimistic in the long term we should just expect that this virus is going to continue to cause illness hopefully more on a seasonal basis but we're not quite there yet all right thank you doctor and my more prosaic question is about what your expectations governor are for that summer tourism season given that gas prices are high but people seem to have a lot of money in their pockets right now well it does look like good news in terms of people visiting our state I am concerned about inflation gas prices and so forth but having said that it appears that people may be making the decision to not fly to a different area of the country but maybe within a three, four, five hour drive they're willing to come to Vermont and visit one of the most beautiful states in the country and one of the safest states in the country and so I think that again bodes well for us we're tracking well in terms of of the receipts so all looks good at this point in time and it does appear that as well that some of the supply chain issues are subsiding but but we still have gas prices they're still much too high and we still have workforce challenges all right great thank you very much guide page from our daily chronicle governor what is the latest on the administration and the next mandatory vaccination of school children for the county school again that would be Secretary French Dr. Levine question hi guy this is Dan French we have an immunization advisory council have met this winter we haven't convened another meeting on that yet so we have no new thinking to share at this time okay thank you governor many schools do not have on site school resource officers solving high school experiences on career rather than many others any plans to provide direction or financing state level for SROs and if not the SROs what on site school measures are you proposing well again giving the nature of how our schools are funded and and overseeing on a local level we can give guidance we have we have a a prevention strategy as well Rob Evans and others are providing that and we'll continue to do whatever we can to provide for the safety of our kids I might ask Dr. our Secretary French to add to that hi guy there was a program several years ago funded by the federal government to support the cost of SROs and I think that's what led to a lot of school districts deploying them more recently that you know it is a local option and it is something that districts can support out of their education spending the regular budgets but we don't have a discreet state level program to support those costs at the time at the moment Secretary French the 2018 school security grants was something that was a user yeah that was a very useful useful source of funding large part in 2018 that went through facility upgrades security upgrades and so forth to schools press star six if you had a follow-up question hearing none we'll move to Ed Barber Newport Daily Express actually may I ask a follow-up yeah go ahead guy okay so I just really wasn't clear to me if there is school security grant money available now is that what I just said security say or or not no there is no additional money for that right now I was alluding to the fact that districts can pay for that out of their regular education spending thank you firm Newport Daily Express from McGregor Caledonian record somebody and it will try Tom Davis at Compass Vermont Ed Andrew Tom looks like from our system that you're all unmuted thank you Governor I was just wondering if you've had the chance to watch any of the January 6th hearings and if so your thoughts on on what you've seen and more broadly too some of the the members of Republican members of Congress are still advocating for false election claims just your your thoughts on really where where we are right now and what this could mean for the GOP yes I have been watching some I haven't watched every moment every minute of the deliberations but it's been eye-opening learning more every single time I watch about what unfolded I wish more people were watching to be honest with you we have what 330 million people in the country and I believe we only had 19 million watching so this was an assault on our democracy this was an insurrection and I think they're they're laying out the groundwork pretty well and and so we'll see as we continue this isn't over but but we'll see as they continue to lay out what actually happened and how it happened how it was orchestrated who paid for it and so forth what does it say that you know there's only that 17 19 million people that have watched it I mean what what does that say about if you apathy across the nation again this was this was an assault on our democracy and this was a indisputable insurrection so I hope more people tune in more people listen so that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past and that we can we can move on from this Andrew I do think we can hear you so if you have a question we should be able to hear at this point great thank you am I coming through now you are wonderful for Secretary French I curious his assessment on some of the recovery plans being laid out by schools I know last month that a report from the Center for Education Policy Research out of Harvard tried to quantify the learning laws the academic achievement laws over the pandemic I suspect Vermont's Cal Vermont ranks and that is probably not as bad as other states because we weren't as remote as as many states but I'm just curious you know the commentary by one of the authors suggested that that the response that's being designed by school districts is not up to the challenge of the academic laws and I'm just looking for for your assessment on on how things are shaping up thus far and if if local districts need to to refocus or redirect and just the context of them yeah thanks for the question again I think it's a very complex moment and there are different experiences across the country on this I was at a meeting in Utah the other day and Idaho I think in Utah we're talking about their state-level results not really showing much difference in student outcomes but we've seen other parts of the country where students are just now coming back to in-person instruction so I think you know it's hard hard to talk generally nationally on this I think similarly we have our work cut out for us in Vermont to understand the trends because we we had an uneven experience inside the state due to our decentralized education system and I think it's then useful as I was describing previously in our plan to think about particularly from an academic perspective the difference the impact on elementary students versus middle-level students versus high school students you know if you remember your primary age experience in school those are foundational educational moments in your academic development so students who for example aren't taught how to read or don't necessarily have sufficient understanding of basic mathematical concepts will struggle and that's where a lot of districts are going with their planning relative to tutorial but then when you contemplate the middle level where those foundational skills are then socialized to a large extent and we rely heavily on the social aspects of learning at that grade level and those students have been denied those opportunities for regular healthy academic development and social development so I think you know as a state as I was describing we have to position our state dollars in our state planning as part of a partnership at best with school districts and other community organizations to have it be in all hands on deck moment because I think we need to look more specifically at the trends I think you know we're hearing that students that were at risk prior to the pandemic are probably greater at risk now we have the need at the state level to look across the different regions of our state and to to segregate the information to look at different subpopulations but I think locally that same work will be happening so I don't necessarily agree with sort of a broad characterization I think you know we're we're all putting our shoulders to the wheel on this and we've had we've had a good moment writing out the rest of the school year and to your point you know Vermont's had a very successful approach not only to the pandemic but in education we've done our best but we have our work cut out for us in the fall and we want to make the most of this moment in these federal dollars to do what we can to address not only the academic needs of our students but also their social emotional needs one of the strategies that's often utilized for academic recovery is you know individualized learning tutors extended class opportunities with the workforce challenges especially in in education that the state's facing and that's across the country you know are there enough qualified people within Vermont school system to be able to make up some of the some of this cap and learning yeah I mean that's a great question and that that points to really understanding the context you know one of the strategies I described was a significant investment in our remote learning capacity including tutorial services and folks my question that is we're pivoting back to in-person learning but I see remote learning as being an important resource in a rural state like Vermont essentially provides 24 seven an individual remediation opportunities and expansion acceleration opportunities so as a rural state we really need to you know deploy more remote learning not only for workforce issues but just to expand curriculum offerings and making instruction more responsive to the individual needs of students so you know the strategies that local school districts are designing are going to be hindered to extend by the the workforce that's available so we're going to have to look at all these different aspects as we design you know our recovery was our experience with remote education so successful that that we want to return to it yeah well I I think it's important to separate you know say the tool from the experience that we we you know put together in a rapid moment at the initial part of the pandemic but I mean I can tell you anecdotally I've heard from many students who who really enjoyed that opportunity to learn online and found it very useful so it's you can't characterize the the technology the tool in a general way I think there is a good application of remote learning in that technology we learn essentially through experiment at the beginning part of the pandemic but I think school districts have significantly increased their understanding of how to how to thoughtfully use these tools and we need to figure that out if they haven't okay and finally in your opening remarks you've been out of flee for the community response to help with recovery work people who who listen to that where should they turn to step up and help should they be going to their local schools is there a program through AOE how can they get involved yeah I think the first direction would be to reach out to their local school district I think that's that's where the interest can be most impactful but we're we're hearing from groups all across the state the other day Deputy Secretary Boucher and I met with big brothers big sisters for example and they essentially we're offering their organization up as a as a partner organization so at the state level certainly by all means reach out to the agency but we're also going to I think try to work and build that capacity up in each ecosystem if you will at a school district level but I think ultimately at the state level will produce a directory of partner organizations that are available and are interested in supporting this work okay thank you very much for your time you're welcome do a last call for Ed or Tom okay over no sorry yeah so that was a lot on the educational side of services for students but in terms of the mental health side where would you describe we're at in terms of mental health services for students like you've mentioned that you're having increased services in the coming year but in terms of right now how would you describe that how would we describe mental health services for students in the state well again we're we have a number of different programs whether it's summer programs summer matters programs I think that that's the next step getting outside getting back together is going to be great for a student's mental health and and take advantage of everything that we have to offer very French I think I should have mentioned our primary recovery strategy this year is to keep schools open but you're right I mean there is a shortage of resources not just for school age children but for adults as well and it's important I think to draw a line between clinical mental health services and sort of pro-social activities that we could promote in schools I think in particular it's been great to see in the last couple of months the emphasis on the arts in our communities I think the arts go a long way to healing and also involve students in expressing their joy and their inspiration but that's part of in terms of what we're working on this integration of social services both Secretary Samuels and I refer to I think that's where we need to go I think that's where all rural states frankly need to go because they're they're limited resources to deploy and we need to have a sense of the patterns of the needs so we can do some triage and again not everything's of a clinical nature but we have a shortage of clinical resources but we have to we have to be able to get better information better data and the patterns that need and better understand how to deploy the limited resources we have and our thinking is that needs to happen on a regional basis that's basically how our resources are deployed right now at the state level and there's an unevenness to that you know what the northeast kingdom has for example in terms of integration of social services is not what Chittenden County has not to say they should be exactly the same but there needs to be some attention to that based on the needs okay as we wrap up by once again want to wish Commissioner Scherling well as he embarks on his next venture Vermont certainly is in a much better position because of his dedication and service so thank you again for all you've done with that we'll see you next week