 Here we go. All right, Ms. Szyglowski, you are next. And then we will move, I think, to our two superintendents who are with us with a quick introduction from Jeff Francis. But for now, Ms. Szyglowski, great to see you. Great to see you too. Thank you very much, Chair Campion. And I'm Sue Szyglowski on the executive director of the Vermont School Board Association. A happy new year to the committee and thank you very much for the opportunity to give you an update today. Thinking back to when the session ended in May of 2021, I know we were all anticipating that there was gonna be a return to school in the fall. There was gonna be a focus on recovery from the impacts of the pandemic. And as mentioned by the witnesses prior to me today, that really has not been the case. That plan has been overshadowed by the more immediate need to focus on health and safety. We had the Delta variant come in in the fall that put even more strain on schools than last year. And then now this winter, we have a surge of the Omicron variant that is putting even more stress on the system. So first what I plan to do is give you a report from the field and then I'll just cover a few of our requests for the legislative session. So report from the field. There's one school board chair, Jim Murphy, who's the chair of the Montpelier Roxbury School Board who wrote a very insightful commentary expressing his deep concern that Vermont schools are at a breaking point. And in outlining the challenges of this particular school year compared to last year, the commentary points to many of the hard choices that have been left to school boards and school administrators without clear support from the state. The cumulative effects of stress on teachers, administrators and staff, the constant anxiety of living with a potentially deadly virus and its unpredictability, the increase in high level behavioral and social emotional supports needed by students and also the deficiencies in our mental health system, which is not equipped to keep pace with the mental health issues that students are facing. I provided a link to chair Murphy's piece in my written testimony, which I sent in to the committee. And I would encourage all of you to read it if you haven't seen it already because even though it was written in October, it really still rings true today, actually even more so today than when it was written. As mentioned by previous witnesses, the labor shortage is another compounding factor which is adding to the stress on school systems and schools are unable to fill a range of positions that have been mentioned previously. And then in addition to everything previously mentioned, many districts are navigating controversies around masking, critical race theory and other issues that are dividing communities. School districts are receiving record numbers of public records requests on these topics, which are time consuming and can be very costly to address. And additionally, conflicts over mask mandates and other hot button issues are affecting school board meetings. As this committee knows, school boards are the connection between communities and schools. And as such an important part of a school board's work is engaging with the community. And lately that has really been a challenge. The refusal of community members to wear masks in a school rendered at least one school board unable to hold duly worn meetings during the fall. Public comment periods have become difficult to manage at times straying significantly from the type of civil discourse school boards strive to model for their students and their communities. And no matter where you stand on the issues if board meetings are not productive, inclusive and safe, it ultimately does a disservice to the students. In order to give school board members tools to navigate this challenging time, the VSBA held a webinar in Vermont covering how to structure the public comment period, rules that can be put in place to meet the requirements of open meeting law and set expectations for decorum at school board meetings, how to de-escalate contentious situations and how to build community consensus around an issue. We had speakers on the webinar panel including state legal, educational, behavioral and public safety experts. I've provided in my written testimony links to the video of the webinar which is definitely worth watching if you have the time, the PowerPoint slides and we have some suggested meeting management language for board chairs that helps set the expectations for their public comment periods. And there's also language we've provided to them in case of a significant emergency where they would need to shut down their meeting. The pressing need for this type of resource for school boards is indicative of the current challenges that they face. I'll now move on to our legislative requests. So after hearing my previous comment is probably not gonna come as a surprise that we're asking the general assembly not to tackle new education policy initiatives in the 2022 legislative session but not to say that you should be the do nothing committee, right? You talked about that earlier. So the education system is struggling under the current strains of the Delta and Omicron variants and new initiatives advanced last session are very significant and I've listed a very long list in my written testimony of what they are. So we respectfully request that you limit focus to existing education related issues in the upcoming session. And there are some that I've listed in my written testimony as being priorities including implementing the pupil waiting factors report, examining and addressing the equity and cost effects of public funding of vouchers for independent schools in light of United States Supreme Court decisions and upcoming decisions, developing programmatic details for testing PCBs and remediation funding for PCBs, amending section six of act 35 of 2021 which prohibited suspension or expulsion of a student enrolled in a public school who's under eight years of age unless the student poses an imminent threat of harm or dangers to others in the school. We'd like to see that amended to include private universal pre-K programs and independent schools addressing the evaluation and future of e-finance and reviewing and responding to the recommendations of the pension benefits design and funding task force. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you today. I look forward to working with you during the session and happy to answer any questions. Questions for Mr. Głowski. Sue, did we didn't put in there the, for suspensions, expulsions, we didn't include private schools in that? We just published. No, they were included in a portion of the bill but I don't believe they were included in that section six of the bill. Okay, thank you. But Senator Persley. Sue, and I guess this is for anybody that we're talking to today. This is around act 173. Haven't heard anybody bring that up. You brought up the people waiting report and I had a question about that. Did you, we said at the report that you mean the task force report or the you and Rutgers report? So it's got two questions. Have you been hearing from school boards about further delay back to 173 and specifically in relation to the people waiting issue? And what did you mean about implement the report? Okay, yes, we have been hearing from school boards regarding act 173. We've been getting, I think there are some districts that are more ready for implementation than others. But one of the things that I think everyone agrees on is that it needs to be well coordinated with implementation of the people waiting factors or however that is resolved that those two issues are intertwined and the people waiting factors report actually is a result of act 173. So they are all intertwined in it that it should be coordinated. And when I talked about implementing the people waiting factors report, VSBA, I think I've probably explained to your committee in the past VSBA has a process for member boards to submit proposed resolutions and then our members vote on them. And at our annual meeting on November 4th they passed a resolution in support of the people waiting factors report. So that's what I'm referring to when I talked about implementing the people waiting factors report. So that if I can share that resolution was done before the task force had issued their report. So they didn't have, they just had the original report at that time. Correct, yes. Right, thank you. Senator Chinden. So in my hometown, there was a five member school board, one year into the first time term, they throw the three year term, one year in the school board members step down and then two incumbents have announced they're not running for reelection this coming March. So we have three of our five seats open. I'm curious, and it's partly because of the things you started with your commentary about how hard it is on school boards these days. Are you seeing it across the state, that an exodus, so to speak of these positions? And then the second part of that question is, I'm gonna say I am new around here, but in the before times, did the state do anything to show our sincere appreciation through school board recognitions, dinners, other things that we do from a state level? I know with firefighters and policemen and all sorts of emergency responders, it's important to have those annual events just to applaud and appreciate them. Do what have we done? And do you see anything that we could do to show our appreciation for school board members? Thank you, those are great questions. I don't have any hard data on, how many school board members are planning to, not planning to run again or planning to resign, but I do, I sort of have heard anecdotally that that may be happening. So I think we're gonna see in the next few months how that goes because they need to, get their information in the month of January if they're going to be running again. So I can say that it certainly has been sort of above and beyond the past few years, what school board members have needed to do to fulfill their responsibilities. And I can certainly understand how it is wearing on some people. It's definitely, we've got a lot of great public servants in Vermont serving on school boards. And I'm hopeful that we'll continue to see that as we move forward. Your question about, has the state done anything to show appreciation for school board members? The Vermont house typically does a resolution each year and they're doing it again this year. It's read aloud in the chamber. I mean, usually it's, before COVID it was live and we would go and it would be, a really kind of exciting event we'd invite members to come to and it was a resolution appreciating school board members. And we always appreciate that very much. That is happening again this year, but of course it won't be live. January is school board recognition month and that's part of what the resolution talks about. And we as an association always try to show appreciation for our members, especially during the month of January. And in the past, we've been extremely lucky that darn tough socks of Vermont has donated a pair of socks for every school board member in Vermont which is very significant. There's over 850 of them. They weren't able to do it this year due to issues caused by the pandemic, but we're hopeful that that can continue on in future years. And if you have other ideas for ways that we could show appreciation certainly would love to hear them. Thank you very much. I hope we can do more than just socks. Socks are great, but I'd love to find a bundle of things, including socks to give each of them. No, it's a great idea and I think it's centered right. Are there ways that we can recognize folks out there that are doing this tough job and it is particularly hard right now, as you mentioned, Sue, with everything that's on people's plates. So thank you. Other questions for Ms. Siglowski? Okay, Sue, thanks a million. Great to see you and I know we'll continue our work together. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Francis. Thank you very much. I want to thank the committee for hanging in there today. It's been a long afternoon of testimony. Given the topics that you're covering today, the way schools are contending with COVID and how the legislature can support efforts by schools, I thought it was wise of me to bring two superintendents who are quite experienced and have been effective leaders in contending with all of the circumstances of the pandemic in their school systems and their communities. So I'm pleased to have with me today, Libby Bone-Steel, who is the superintendent for the Montpelier-Roxbury School District and Gene Collins, who is the superintendent for the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union. Both of them hold leadership positions, not only in their communities, but for the association statewide. So I'm gonna stand down as it were and let them pick up VSA's testimony, we've provided it to you in writing. When you get to the question section, if I have anything to contribute, I will, but for now I wanna turn it over to Libby and to Jeannie. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Mr. Francis. And Libby and Jeannie, great to see both of you. You're both familiar faces to all of us and grateful for all you're doing. We do have a four o'clock chairs meeting. I don't think that should, hopefully 20, 25 minutes will be enough for the two of you, but we're always welcome to have the two of you back. And I apologize that we've been going a little bit long as the nature of the topic. So with that, the floor is yours. Well, we appreciate that you saved the best for last. And I think that you'll find that Libby and I kind of tied together a lot of the stuff you've already heard, but maybe from a provider perspective. So we're not going to mince a lot of words with respect to how the schools are doing. The challenges are formidable and they should not be understated. This is my 17th year as a school superintendent in the state of Vermont and absolutely unlike any other year, including unlike last year. For superintendents, our experience and our perspectives bring us to these observations that we're going to share with you. First and foremost, I'd like to speak to the anxiety levels. You've heard little pieces of this, particularly with Jeff Fannin's testimony, but the anxiety levels are very high among staff and members of the community. A piece of this is the inconsistent or poorly timed communications from the Center for Disease Control, Governor Scott's office, the Vermont Department of Health, the agency of education without some sufficient warning or detail given to superintendents. In fact, I learned some things on this call today that I wasn't even aware of. And this is problematic in a number of levels. For example, decisions or absence of decisions that have been problematic include the decision not to impose a statewide mask mandate, which means that it's a district by district battle on a daily basis. COVID test kits being distributed without advance notice to school officials, the Department of Health changing and announcing changes to guidance at a time over holiday break. And I do understand that CDC was making those changes, but the way it was communicated and the fact that there was not coordination in the announcement of those changes. And in fact, AOE has yet to put out their response to that guidance. And I'm in my second day of return to school. It makes it very difficult for us to communicate and comprehend as I was navigating my 16th class closure in the last two days during this call, I had a nurse put out information that does not even match what's on the VDH website and she got it from a VDH staff member. So that just creates an incredible amount of stress and anxiety. And we do understand that circumstances might dictate that the decisions have to be made in this manner. Clearly the state cannot control when CDC changes guidelines, but the way they're made and communicated does bring stress and acrimony to school communities, including families, staff and students. Educator anxiety is also impacted by sudden switches and protocols as they're standing in front of 20, 25 kids who do not keep their masks on all day. And then in their break, when they hope to take off their mask and have a quiet moment, we ask them to go and sub into the classroom with colleagues who are also out quarantining for their own illness or that of their families. So what used to be considered a planning break just simply does not exist any longer. We are asking people to do double duty. Libby? Yes, thank you for all having me today. I appreciate it. And the honor of testifying with Jeannie Collins is something that I'll remember. So staffing capacity in general, and it's tied to what Jeannie was just talking about with just an overwhelming sense of anxiety is an absolutely major concern. And it's really important to acknowledge that we run schools, we don't run restaurants. We can't just pick somebody up off the street and say, come be an instructional assistant or come be a teacher. You have to have training. You have to be good with kids. You have to like kids. You have to run through a background check and pass it. There are many things that happen that we need to have in order to staff our schools. We can't just pick somebody up from the street. We can't just change ships with the exception of maybe our custodial staff. We have a little bit of wiggle room with ships with custodial staff as long as we have enough people. There are things with schools that we have to keep regular. That's what parents expect. That's what families need. That's what kids need. And so we have to keep on this regular schedule and unlike a private business, we don't have any leeway there. So when we don't have staff, we've got to figure it out. And we have to figure it out typically in probably a 20-minute time span, 20 to 30-minute time span or around 6.45 in the morning. We can't get substitute teachers. And in many cases, we can't fill existing openings for full-time teachers. Somebody was talking earlier about teachers who resigned. In Montpelier-Roxbury, we have a pretty solid school district that doesn't have a lot of turnover on a general basis. I've had four teachers resign since the beginning of the year this year. And I know that I'll have tons at the end of this year. I just hope they make it to spring. They make it to June, so we don't have to try to fill it in the beginning of the year. So all of this adds to that anxiety and that stress because people are having to cover. I've had to reassign people to do positions that they were not planning on doing and they're not licensed to do. I've had to get emergency licensure and provisional licensures. It's just not what's best for kids. And this is happening to school systems across the state. I have actually a relatively large substitute pool with the exception at my middle school. Nobody seems to want to substitute in middle school. I'm not really sure why. They don't want to spend the day with adolescents. But in other districts across the state, I know my colleagues just can't find subs. It's just not something I can even find. When other schools close, that influences all the districts because our teachers, of course, don't just work in our community, but they work all over the place. You think of central Vermont and Montpelier. You could live anywhere within a 45-mile radius of here and that's a pretty significant amount of school districts that that represents. All of this really exasperates being able to teach well and having the mental health capacity and just being bringing our best selves to work every day, particularly for my teachers and my instructional assistants. Do you want to take over? Sure, I think my dog is trying to put in his two cents worth. I'll translate it for you. We are talking about, despite our best efforts, some of the school closures do become necessary. I appreciate what Secretary French said. This should not be proactive. And I think you'll find across the state that despite the high anxiety and the fear of Omicron schools across the state opened this week. It was not proact, we did not proactively close despite if you read the Twitter feed, you would think that we could do nothing else. But we are trying to, our goal is to stay open. But despite that, with the COVID related illnesses, the chronic lack of substitute personnel, what, let me just talk about the impact of another school closure on my own district and my own staff as parents. These things do lead to periodic classroom or school closures. I had to close Nesha B. School for four days before the vacation because I had seven classrooms with a COVID outbreak and 22 staff absent and I couldn't cover the 22 staff. I mean, 22 staff is pretty large. So we had to close for four days and move to remote learning, which may or may not be covered by the waiver, but I would rather if the kids are able to at least stay engaged, I would rather at least be able to offer that. So what would help around that is there is some problematic messaging about how it's imperative to keep schools open without taking all the necessary steps to curb the community transmission to the greatest extent possible. As Secretary French said, COVID is most likely coming into the schools as opposed to being spread within the schools to begin with a couple more points, Libby. Yeah, student behavior for us at Montpelier-Roxford, particularly in kindergarten, eighth grade and the ninth and 10th grade is considerably less stable than in typical years. I believe in my original statement to Jeff, it was the word volatile and explosive, which would describe the behaviors that we're seeing. In kindergarten, you have to think of a five-year-old may not have ever been in daycare, may not have ever had the opportunities to say you need to share, you need to sit or in a group setting, they may have been just in their home with just their immediate family, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but they may not have learned social skills that a typical three- and four-year-old might learn at that time. And so we're having a lot of very explosive behaviors from kindergartners that rarely happens for us. In eighth grade, our adolescents are taking their cues from TikTok more than anybody else, and we're trying to teach them again how to be respectful humans. And in ninth and 10th grade at MRPS, we're seeing a considerable increase in drug use that we haven't seen in quite a long time from our ninth and 10th graders. So in other schools are reporting more violent behaviors from our high schoolers or from our middle schoolers. We don't quite have that at MRPS, but I know others do. So we just don't have the capacity when you think about the staffing to deal with these increasing mental health and behavior needs. And so what we're doing is we're trying to improvise and establish programs for kids with high intensive behavior needs in real time when the kids are with us without the internal staff and with limited or no mental health capacity outside of our schools. There simply are not spots in schools outside of public institutions for kids who would benefit right now from a different environment. The environment we're providing is not necessarily helpful for them. They need to learn some skills that we don't have the capacity right now. So we are treading water right now through some very rough waves and the waves just keep coming. When we think we have a downward slide and we're able to breathe a little bit, Omnicron comes. And so our progress on our traditional educational priorities included those enacted by this general assembly has been disrupted or even just put on hold. There are no growth possibilities right now with initiatives or strategic plans. We're doing the bare minimum in terms of growing as a school district because there's simply not any mental capacity for learning in the adults. The adults are spending their mental capacity treading water in these waves. So when I'm thinking about staff development possibilities for things like 173 or literacy, none of that really can take place. Not only does my staff not have the mental capacity for it, my administrators simply don't have time to plan for it because we're spending our days covering or testing or figuring out coverage or dealing with student behavior. There's just no room for anything else. I spent my entire day yesterday testing students and I do that every Monday. I know that I will be on the phone with parents for four hours tonight because of our weekly surveillance test results will start to come in. And tomorrow my day will be canceled most likely because of talking with parents and dealing with positive cases. So our academic progress and opportunities have significantly suffered. As daily operations and efforts focus on operational survival and this school year, the absences of students and staff have become quite significant as well. I heard from one superintendent today, one of his middle schools had 50% of his students absent today. And that's with no, with nothing, like no big significant events, there was just 50% of the students absent. We will eventually be held accountable to the outcomes that are coming and now we're in year three. And so that's gonna be really, really hard to think about what that looks like and what that means and how do we mitigate it right now. Any in-service time that we have for our staff, I've given it back to my staff as small tokens of, hey, take this time for yourself, do what you need to do, meet with colleagues, play basketball, do what you need to do at this time because they're simply just really overwhelmed right now. Libby, I just wanna see Senator Lines, did you wanna ask a question? I apologize. Yeah, I do, it just sounds so discouraging, really. And I've heard this from my own constituents in my district. And so I guess my question is what will help in this short term, this is kind of a cute time where you are spending your time doing what I consider to be public health work. So I mean, my question is, are there people out in the community who could do some of the things that would take the burden off of you and your administrators and your teachers so that all of that, let's call it non-academic, non-school, but public health work could be done by others. And I know this is difficult because you have health information for kids and you're calling parents and there's a lot of confidentiality involved in all this, but is there any thinking about how to relieve the, you know, the pressure valve? We did come with ideas for you. Oh, not. And if you could show up tomorrow morning at National Bee School at 6.45, I mean, 7.45 to help with that study, we welcome you. Good question. One of the difficulties we have, Senator Lyons, is that there just aren't people. We can't even hire people to be a paraeducator, to be a custodian. To, you know, we just, there aren't, people don't exist. And then we're limited by, like you said, confidentiality and background laws. But we continue to try, but we do have some ideas for you which was the second part of what you asked us to bring to you today. So we are presenting a gloom and doom world because it feels very heavy to us. It's, as superintendents, all of it is resting on my shoulder. I, there is no getting away from it. My own son tested positive for the second Christmas in a row on Christmas day. And I'm like, well, of course you did. And my superintendent brain clicks in and I start, you know, organizing everybody in the house. And it's like, wait a minute, these are my kids. It's just, there is no leaving it behind and the stress on our staff and our administrators is really, really worrying me. But with respect to the question, how can the general assembly be helpful? We have some ideas there. First and foremost, we would repeat, please don't spend your time on new legislation that's going to add burdens to what we're already doing right now. We've got Act 173. We've got Act 72, the Omnibus Law and Capital Infrastructure. We've got the waiting factors report, PCB testing, all of that, things as simple as now we are providing menstrual products and condoms to kids in school. All of those things are, believe it or not, as small as it sounds, adding to the stress that we have. We don't have time to run to the store to buy the products. So, it's that simple. So we just asked that you focus, there are things that you can do legislatively, but please until we emerge from the logistical and operational and learning related dynamics that we're currently in, schools can get the job done, but not if priorities keep getting added and more programs are added on. Similarly, to be realistic about what's facing the education system in Vermont presently. We were asked earlier, and I just mentioned some of them, what is on our plate already? The first half of this biennium was one of the more prolific for public education in recent memory, and there are a lot of large policy issues in front of us. Again, the implementation of the waiting factors report, and I agree it needs to be in combination with Act 173. They are not two separate things. They really need to be pulled together in concert or they will be very difficult to implement without harming children. The capital infrastructure, PCB testing, remediation, all those things, and then large, the incredible work of every school district to improve equity of opportunity and access for students across the board is first and foremost on all of our minds. And I think the pandemic has especially exacerbated this because it becomes very obvious the divide between the haves and the have-nots and how the schools really are set up to support the haves, as was described by J. Nichols and Universal Pre-Kayla. We're asking first and foremost, what can you do? I would put at the very top of my list to expeditiously enact legislation that allows retired educators to augment the education workforce. J. Nichols again mentioned this earlier. He has put out a bill, VPA has put out a bill before. This does require removing provisions of the law that limit the capacity. This relief can be temporary for at least this year and next would be nice with an evaluation necessary to extend, but our workforce supply challenges are likely to be ongoing. It's great and I totally agree with talking about how to recruit new teachers. I've done a little bit of my part. My daughter is a first-year teacher, but she went to Virginia Beach with her Navy fiance and that's where she's teaching right now. But we need to bring more in, but most immediately I'm facing a sixth grade class who has just entered their third teacher of the year yesterday and she's a retired teacher who's fabulous who can only give us until February break when I have to find a fourth teacher of the year because otherwise she is potentially losing retirement benefits. That is as quickly as you could do. If you could do that before February break, I would definitely appreciate that. Livy? I'm sorry, Senator Chinden, you had your hand up. I know we're running out of time, but really quickly, do you have any opinion on what Jeff Fannon suggested regarding SBAC testing and would that be something that superintendents would be supportive of and relieving the requirement for standardized testing during this year of the pandemic? I'm not sure it's something that you can do at the state level, but I do agree with what Dan French said and Jeff Fannon that right now is not the time to test. Right now is the time to get as much learning into our kids as we possibly can. So I am gonna try to hold us to our time limit here. So any kind of conclusionary, concluding thoughts would be great and we can always have you back. Yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, it's in writing. So I went in, a lot of it has been repeated from your other witnesses today. I would just reiterate or the closing piece of anything that we can do to do statewide rather than locally controlled decision-making. It's just not working for schools and it's not working for our school boards and it's not working for our communities. And it's putting us superintendents in a really hard bind sometimes. So anything we can do statewide is really appreciated. We have four minutes, so happy to take any questions too. I just heard a call for less local control. I guess I'd wanna tease that out a little bit more and understand what you really specifically mean, but that's good to hear. Libby? Yeah, the mask mandate piece. Why would that be done by towns? That doesn't make sense to us. That kind of thing is anything that has to do with a health response, use the science and decide what is best for the state, for Vermonters. Not lay people shouldn't be making those decisions. I have emails on a daily basis that COVID is a cold. Stop acting like this, stop sending me letters. My child will come to school whether you say so or not. Compared to an email I got just on this thing of why the hell are you still in school? Go remote immediately. And so there's such a range. Our communities are not epidemiologists or are not scientists no matter how many articles in the New York Times they read. So we need somebody else to make that decision. No, I appreciate your directness on that. I think that's really helpful for us to hear. Ladies and gentlemen, I really appreciate it. I know it was the first day back and we jumped right into it. We'll do introductions and committee priorities tomorrow after hearing the governor's address. And certainly it's been incredibly helpful hearing from all of you. I know I speak for my colleagues when I say we look forward to the partnership with these next few months. And I think we've heard loud and clear the needs out there and we'll be certainly without a doubt be focused on how we can support your work as much as possible and to make life better going forward for everything that everyone has on their plate whether it's schools, teachers, superintendents, principals, students. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, committee. We'll see you tomorrow afternoon after the governor's address. Thanks.