SmartTranscript of House Education- 2025-01-10 - 1:00PM

[Zoe Saunders ]: And you are live. [Peter Conlon ]: Great. Welcome to a joint committee meeting this afternoon. The date which is out of my head, but we'll call it January tenth for [Zoe Saunders ]: Yes. [Peter Conlon ]: That's our best guess. As a joint hearing between the health education committee and the senate education committee, and we're here to hear a report from the agency of education and secretary Saunders on her listen [David Weeks ]: and learn tour around Vermont and [Peter Conlon ]: really some of the themes and information that he's provided from that. Before we begin, because this really is the first time that our two committees have come together, and, in fact, the first time that the senate education committee has come together. Let's do a very quick round of introductions around the table, name and the time we're from, and let's move on from there. To get a new representative too. Representative Casey Toope. I represent St. Albans City and St. Albans Town. [Zoe Saunders ]: Representative Lee Ann Harpel. I represent Albany Crafts Creek Lover and Greensboro. [Peter Conlon ]: Senator Heffernan, I represent Addison County. Rob Hunter, Manchester Arlington, Sandy. Senator. [Zoe Saunders ]: Representative Janet Brown, I represent the town of Richmond. [David Weeks ]: Senator David Weeks representing Rutland County. Senator Seth Bongertz, Bennington Center District. [Peter Conlon ]: Representative Peter Conlon, chair of the House Education Committee, and I am from Cornwall. Senator Nadar Hashim, representing Wyndham County. [David Weeks ]: Representative Joshua Dobrich, representing Williamstown. Representative Chris Taylor, Milton, Georgia. [Zoe Saunders ]: Senator Keisha Ram Hinsdale, Chittenden, Southeast. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: Representative Emily Long, Newcane, and other things. Representative Bev Quimby, Sheffield, Wheelock, Sutton, Newark, and London. [Peter Conlon ]: Thank you. [Zoe Saunders ]: Oh, okay. Yeah. That's alright. I represent all my time, and I represent Humphrey. [Peter Conlon ]: Thanks. Just for a little logistics here, Senator, Vanguard, somebody didn't get a chance to [David Weeks ]: sort of defer early. But what [Peter Conlon ]: I think we'll do is we'll kinda run through the whole presentation. We'll move on to questions. Maybe we'll have the senate go first. We'll exhaust their questions. We'll go to the house. If there are any questions or we need to ping money back and forth, but maybe we'll [Zoe Saunders ]: That's a dangerous thing to give the senate. [Peter Conlon ]: That's for the questions. [Zoe Saunders ]: That's correct. [Peter Conlon ]: I'll say it for questions. Great. So I think at this point, we'll turn it over to the two of you. You can introduce yourself for the record, and looking forward to your presentation. [Zoe Saunders ]: Good afternoon. I'm Zoe Saunders, secretary of education, and I wanna thank you for coming together. I know that this is your first day, but being in these roles, I really appreciate the opportunity for you to coordinate so that we can share this information, in one meeting and get your thoughts. I'd like to ask Jill to share also a little bit about her role and her reflection on the listen and learn tour, and then we'll walk through our presentation. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Jill Briggs Campbell. I'm the interim deputy secretary for the agency of education. For those who know me, you may know me as the director of operations or COVID federal emergency funds manager. So it's really great to be back in the state house in this new role and doing this really exciting work with all of you. It's a big work, and we're we're sure if he's doing it. Yeah. And I guess before we sort of kick off to the presentation, I will share sort of my experience of the the listen and learn, and and Zoe is going to talk about all of the places that we went. I I joke that I have now seen more Vermont towns than my native Vermont husband, [David Weeks ]: which is a real [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: point of pride for me in my house. But I I'm a I'm a former educator. I'm a fifth generation educator, and so I love it when I get to attend in school. It feels like home for me. And this experience of getting to go around the state, and we did the lesson learned, but we've also really starting this summer, we've been out in the state a lot for, you know, capital for a day, and I've spent a lot of time up in Newport this year and and really getting to to see parts of the state that I hadn't before, and and I've been here for seven years and and really got the opportunity to, like, get to every corner of it and to be in schools talking to teachers, talking to principals, talking to students, talking to family. It was a really wonderful experience. And for me and I think also for Zoe, it validated in a lot of ways some of the things that we've been observing. I think you've been observing. But one of the critical things I bet at every listening and learning, we're doing I believe we did divide and conquer. We had to. We covered a lot of ground. [Zoe Saunders ]: But one [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: of the things I I would really remind folks when I was standing in the room with them is that one of the things that I love about Vermont that gives me a great deal of pride in the state that I now call home is there is a deep commitment to education in the state. And for folks who have lived in different states, you know it's not always like that. That was not always my experience as an educator in communities where they didn't really have an education and its value. And I think that in this moment of crisis and hard decisions and, you know, big issues that we need to address, we really need to keep in mind that that is a strength. We can only do this kind of work because Vermonters genuinely in their core believe in education. And that's really the only reason to try to do this work. In other states, they would come to this crisis, and they would throw their hands up and say, we're not trying to fix it. Right? But we can do this work together because of that deep seated value, and we don't wanna lose sight of that. So that that was the biggest takeaway for me. It really reaffirmed for me something that I long held as a belief, but really spot in your shoes. So it was a wonderful experience. Cool. [Zoe Saunders ]: Thank you, Jill. And I wanna thank Jill for her partnership in this work. It really has taken the entire agency of education to to pull this off. As a new leader to the state, I made a commitment to travel across the state, to hear from Vermonters, to really understand the educational priorities, the need, and the aspirations of communities across Vermont. And as soon as I came, to the state and started doing school visits, it was evident to me that this work had to be done in coordination with our entire team at the agency. And this became an expanded approach to really think intentionally around how we can develop the agency of education strategic plan and to do that in partnership with our entire staff. And it was really a rewarding experience to be able to do this work with our team, and we have been every month coming together as a staff to reflect on what we've learned. And you'll see through the presentation, we are really building ourselves as a more responsive and agile agency of education, and we've been proactive in addressing some of the feedback or request for additional support all along the way as we're also developing a longer term plan and strategic vision for the agency of education. So it's been really a wonderful experience for me. I I share, you know, Jill's reflection that Vermont just really care about education. That is so clear. We've been able to talk with people all across the state who took time out of their busy days to really share with us what what mattered most. And even though there are a lot of challenges, I sense a real deep commitment across the state to coming together and figuring out a way that we can make decisions that will best support our students. And we've heard a lot of the call for real collaboration because it's evident that the issues that we're facing in education are quite complex, and they require a multifaceted solution. And we heard from all corners of the state, really, a request to partner and to lead in this area in a way that is really building on the values of Vermont and and really helping to think forward around how we can best support our students. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: So And thank I'll I'll be more. [Zoe Saunders ]: I'm not sure. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: So I also think I I think, though, you're able to thank you all for being here together. Yeah. We understand that having heard the governor's inaugural speech yesterday, we were like, give us the detail. Where's the proposal? And so we we really do wanna thank you for taking this time. We so we have to feel very strongly that, you know, we do have a a education transformation proposal coming down the pipeline. We're going to have it soon, and it's it's really gonna be very fleshed out. But it's really critical. You all are the people who are going to be making very big decisions about that proposal, and so we thought it was really important that you understood what was built into it. And so starting with the listen and learn, and then you'll see to this is what did we hear from the state? What did we hear from Vermont? It's you'll see it's reflected in the. So just thank you for that. I mean, it's really last minute to to have grab the ball in the first shape, which is really just saying. And so to that [Zoe Saunders ]: point, it is a combination of factors that will be informing the proposal. We've heard from a lot of our monitors these themes are coming through pretty consistently across the state, and they're also validated by the data trends that we've been looking at. So we're really building upon what we're hearing in focus groups and what we're seeing in the data that are informing the recommendations and the priorities for the path forward. So I'll walk through a little bit about, you know, why to listen in our tour. You know, I I shared initially it was, you know, my commitment as a new leader to really, understanding the state, and making sure that, in my role, we were prioritizing those initiatives and support efforts that we're gonna best meet the needs of the field. But it really grew from there because I realized that we needed to have this tighter coordination, around strategic planning and that there was a real opportunity, for us to embed our work more deeply in the field. I'll share today what we learned, and we learned a lot, and we were able to walk talk to educators, talk to education leaders, talk to parents, talk to community, and talk to the student. And so we'll surface all of those main themes, and then what's next as we move forward. So, you know, why the the listen and learn for we have touched on this at a high level. But one of the things that we've signaled very strongly in our strategic planning process is that we're developing this plan using three guiding principles of promoting educational quality, equity, and sustainability. And we need to do this well. We knew we had to hear from Vermonters all across the state. We have articulated some very clear objectives of all of our listening sessions. Thank you for many of you who came out to our listening sessions. I appreciated your support being there and also being active partners in this work. As we shared at the listen, learn sessions, this was an opportunity for us to align the agency of education's work to the regional priorities and the needs of communities across Vermont. It was an opportunity for us to identify a shared vision for education, and that would help support the development of other strategic plan. Ultimately, like, we bring people together, and we learn about what's working well in our state. It's a way for us to be able to model those effective practices to improve access to high quality educational opportunities for all students. And we were very intentional about creating synergy with the commission on the future of public education and ensuring that what we were learning through the listener mentor could also be shared with the commission, to inform their work as well. So we did develop a timeline that were very methodical and data driven. We organized this process into three phases. The first phase was to pull together data and give an initial data report that showed the current state of our system. During this time period in the summer, we also coordinated with superintendents to get input on how we could best develop this listening platform in a way that would really promote engagement and also to help us understand what are the big issues that your communities are facing so that we can tailor our engagement to address those needs. In phase one, we released the state education profile report in August, and then we took that report in phase two and really engaged in a very deep data validation process. One of the early commitments that I made was to ensure that we could improve data access and data reporting. We were hearing that immediately that we needed to do that to inform decision making. And so during phase two, we had regional planning sessions, and we had six different sessions with education leaders. Part of that work was looking at the data and identifying where we may need to make some improvements or expand the analysis or provide more context. And we had a very thorough process, and we identified that there are hundreds of lost family data issues, but there was some initial issues with how we were doing the calculations, and we made, that we were dedicated to, correcting that and expanding our analysis. So that phase two was such an incredibly important, part of of not only learning, but building in improvements, to our overall capacity as an agency to do data reporting. And we rereleased the state education profile report, and that has a lot of expanded analysis. And it's been thoroughly vetted with the field. It was also an opportunity for us to implement some new validation processes, as we do data reporting moving forward, and to provide additional training so that there's consistency in how we code things, across the state, to help with our with all the reporting. So phase two, we involved in regional it was superintendents, principals, business managers, curriculum directors, special education directors, school board members all came together. We'll talk a little bit about the components of that planning session, but really helped us to understand the priorities of their region, started to develop regional profiles, and also the role of the agency on kid playing best supporting our education leaders. From there, we moved into phase three, which is our public engagement session, and we hosted in person and virtual sessions. We received a lot of participation. I will walk you through the different roles that people played that came to the meetings, but it was a a really great cross section of stakeholders in each community and really had engaged two way conversation that we learned a lot from. Through this process, we learned that we weren't having as much participation initially from our educators or teachers specifically and students. So we actually developed focus groups just for our educators, and we partnered with Up for Learning to have student focus groups. So we were able to capture their perspectives as well. So by the numbers, these are this is all everywhere we went, we're the the numbers, and we'll show you where we went. So we hosted six regional planning sessions with education leaders. Something we heard that that that type of form is really helpful, because it really was supportive of sharing best practices and learning. So that's something we're looking to build into our ongoing support in the field. We had thirteen educator focus groups, twelve public engagement sessions, and eight youth focus groups. Overall, we were able to engage with those eleven thousand new stakeholders. This is showing the breakdown of different folks that participated. So education so under fifty education leaders, three twenty one educators, three hundred eighty five members of the public, and a hundred and fifteen middle and high school students were part of those. We were, really intentional about traveling all over the state. So it's a little bit hard to see in this visual, but we're able to see when we share the slide with you. Each of the stars represents where we went. The color coding represented it was for the regional planning session or the public engagement sessions, student focus groups, or a combination. So it's a little bit hard to see in the color coding, but as I look through, you know, we went all the way from harvest into Southern Vermont and Bennington and Rattleboro all the way to Enosburg and Island Pond. London. Yeah. In London, near Island Pond. So really did a a full scope geographically traveling all across state. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Alright. A lot of [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: road miles. A lot [Zoe Saunders ]: of road miles. There's a beautiful time in fall. It was beautiful to drive in the fall. It got less fun when it was snow. That is also an accurate statement. So what are the the key takeaways? And we're gonna break these down, but, you know, we talked with a lot of different stakeholder groups, and we did see some consistency in these themes that we'll share. So what it's really important for the state to strike that right balance between unity and freedom. We've heard that the motto of Vermont called upon often to describe it. And thinking about, you know, what are the things that are most important for us to be consistent on to ensure equity in terms of educational opportunities for students and ultimately learning outcomes. So that's a problem as we think about that. Within the agency's purview as our strategic plan, we're contemplating that about what we need to be tied on and what do we need to lose on. Those things that we're tied on are things that are most critical to supporting our districts and schools and educators and achieving our educational goal. And in those areas, we wanna align our resources and support and really maximize our efforts. Second, we heard a lot about challenges in achieving equity. So there was a call for us to really think intentionally about ways in which we can make improvements to our system to ensure that equity. And in in practice, a lot of what was discussed was that certain districts, because of budget constraints, aren't able to offer the range of programs, courses, electives that others are. And so it does become a physical equity issue, and there's a call to focus on that. But we asked Vermonters to reflect on the definition of student success, and it was clear that in Vermont, it's a holistic measure of student success is important. And we'll talk about what that means. We certainly heard a need to, evaluate the fundamental of academics and literacy in that, but also more of a well rounded full child education being important, and how do we effectively evaluate, support that. We have heard of an increasing, need for our special education students. There's a growing need there. We'll talk about some of the challenges in terms of teacher shortage and the additional support and stuff that indicated way that communities across the state are at are going to be the need. And, overall, this is coming up pretty clearly, and I think I've already mentioned in my opening. The issues are really complex. It's it's not just one piece that we need to fix. It's really holistic approaches that look at, you know, how we fund, how we deliver education, how we support our educators in the field. And so we heard repeatedly of of all the really strong, safe leadership. But in a way, it's very collaborative. It's building upon the strengths of Vermont and what makes our community special. So I would think that they're not affected. That's alright? I'm with you. Yeah. And can I can [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: I know something? I I wanted to call something out because it's it's something that in my time coming to the legislature, I've actually heard it, and and I I want us to know that Zoe and I are quite transparent about this. You know, the agency of education has not had a strategic plan since two thousand fourteen. That is a reality, and and so we really are being very intentional that this work is part of building a strategic plan, and we've been doing this work with agency staff. And Zoe's been really, clear that the priorities that are coming out, that are being defined by the field. Right? When you're building a strategic plan, you want your sort of your customer, which for us is our field partners and and families and taxpayers and schools and students to be driving what your priorities are. And so we're being very intentional that what we've learned is now what we're going to be prioritizing within the agency. So there's very clear and practical connections that are being made between the agency's work and this work that we've done deals and and then a real commitment that as we develop our strategic plan, we're going to go back out and say, okay. This is what we heard. This is what we're doing to prioritize that work, [Zoe Saunders ]: validate that with us. Are we on [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: the right path? So I wanted to call that out because I know that it's been a concern that's been shared in this building, and it's a concern that Zoe and I also share is that the agency needs a a low star and and all the strategic plans. So we're doing that work. [Zoe Saunders ]: One of the things we asked with our all staff meetings that, you know, raise your hand if you were part of the development of the last strategic plan and, like, maybe two hands are up. Right? And you said, the point of this is in a couple months when we asked if everyone's hand is up. Right? Because everyone has felt part of the process, and we want the community to feel that too. And that that's part of why this report is very lengthy. We really wanted to be able to give a reflect back what we heard so that as we're prioritizing, it really does resonate with what we use at member states were really important to them, and that's important to us as well. So when the first phase, as we mentioned, was the regional planning sessions with education leaders, and we'll go to the next slide to share what what so one of our first questions is we did this work with, you know, how are we how do we organize when we think about region? What does that mean? And so we relied on the superintendents association to define those boundaries. Boundaries. They have regional superintendents association, and those are the already ways in which our education leaders are coming together to plan and organize and and share best practices. So we organized ourselves in that way, and so we hosted planning sessions in the five regions. We ended up splitting up one of the regions into two based on request and also because of availability and timing. And then part of the one of the first things we did when we brought people together was to ask questions to develop that regional profile. And so you'll see in our full report in the appendix, each of the sessions, produced a narrative, of that regional profile, and it reflected on the community assets for each region, the demographic changes, the industry changes, also the school identity, and some other factors that really bring together more of a qualitative understanding of community beyond the quantitative data. We went through at the beginning of these sessions, high level data presentation. So every everything we do as an agency is very data driven. So we start with that, and then we broke out into smaller focus group conversations that were organized around key themes that we've heard were important to focus on. So the first was a focus group on academic performance and accountability. We did share some of the work that we're doing as an agency to update our our state plan, which is a federal requirement, and we're looking for feedback on how to prioritize that. Some of the things we've heard in the sessions was a need to have more reliable, transparent, easy to understand data, time in this was also called upon as an important feature of that work. Specifically, as you think about our state assessment reporting, it tends tends to be released in the winter time frame. In most states, that's released in the summer. And so that's something we're actively working on to accelerate our time frame so that those results are more relevant and can be used for continuous improvement for the academic school year. We also heard a need for greater alignment, really specifically across curriculum, proficiency based learning, local assessments, and state assessment and thinking intentionally around how we support that on a continuum. We've heard a lot about the need for vision for holistic measures of student success. So, yes, acknowledging that it's important to measure literacy, and we wanna continue to do that. But, also, how do we think about other factors of student success, like chronic absenteeism, social emotional learning, indicators, attendance, things like that came in as as possible metric. We heard a request for the agency to provide greater direction and centralized support to improve state outcomes, but also making sure that we have that balance to allow for local customization and creativity. So we as I mentioned earlier, we've been using this terminology of what are we paying on and what are we doing? Right? And that goes back to what we prioritize. But, specifically, we included a quote here from one of our sessions, which is saying, you know what? Basically, when they're having to create everything from scratch, it becomes very laborious, expensive, and time consuming. And so particularly on those things where we're requiring a new legislation or new implementation of the statewide initiative for the agency to be taking a stronger role and being able to do some of that vetting and support because it it is creating a lot of extra work on our districts, which is just taking away their time from being able to analyze their data and act on it and and do the customization that's needed for their student population. We had another breakout session on college and career readiness. So what we heard very strongly across Vermont was the desire to expand from access to flexible pathways and making sure that students get to explore their passions and think through how that can translate into a career for them. There was a very consistent theme about developing regional comprehensive high schools that combine traditional high school and career and technical education offerings, and then that being a a much more streamlined way to do that. They're also requested a way to expand CTE and increasing access as we think about funding for CTE as well. And there were some reflection on barriers. Including transportation can be a barrier. If there's different school calendars, that can be a barrier too. So there's some logistical pieces of that puzzle that we'll need to consider. And then the third section, Jill actually facilitated this session around mental health problem system support because we were hearing a lot about the mental health needs, and there was a question about how the agency could actually quantify the cost and the extent to districts of providing mental health support. So we did provide a a I'm sure I'll still do this session to give you some feedback on what we've heard about that and then some broader check. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: So for this one, we we really were trying to answer two questions because we know, particularly in this building last year, that student mental health needs as well as the sort of rising costs of addressing those needs in schools was was really a topic around which we didn't really have a lot of data. And so there was two pieces to the session. [Zoe Saunders ]: The first was more, like, qualitative. Describe. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: Tell us what you are seeing. How are you experiencing, you know, increases in in student mental health in your schools? And so what we heard was that schools are seeing increased acuity. So the the behaviors, both externalizing behaviors and internalizing behaviors, are more severe than in the past, and they're seeing younger students. So, traditionally, you might see this more in in your middle and high school, and now we're seeing elementary school students who tend to be extreme, like, if anyone has a nine year [Zoe Saunders ]: old, I think. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: So so that was really important to really get that sort of qualitative. We also heard about critical staffing shortages with mental health professionals, which has trickle down impacts in that we're seeing higher rates of burnout for sort of all teachers and staff. And we also saw one of our our folks in an early session described it really well. It was a misalignment of tiers of support in the very top that is trickling down. So we have higher acuity students who are in the building who maybe need support outside of the school setting, but those supports may not be available in community settings. But the school has an obligation to meet the needs of those students, and they're doing very valiant efforts to do so. Right? So now you have a student who has high acuity needs. You have staff within the school that are trying to address those needs, but they're not actually the right level. And then you have misalignment all the way down. So you have students that are not able to get the services that they need, systems that are not aligned to address those, and it's really expensive. So that was a really great description, and I sort of asked that in every regional session. People were nodding their heads. Yes. That is a description of what we're experiencing. The second piece of what we're trying to do is we brought a methodology to try to capture what might be mental health costs, looking at expenditure data and teacher and staff staff numbers. And so we brought this methodology. We wanted to sort of try to validate this with folks. And what we learned is that it's going to be way more complex than I think anybody in this room would like to hear. And what we've learned is there within our sort of our accounting systems, the uniform chart of accounts, there is no great ah, those are the codes. That's mental health. Right? So there might be a code for school psychologist. Right? But where we actually see a lot of the investment made in staff is the category that's called interventionist. The interventionist can be literacy interventionist or they can be the behavioral interventionist. Right? And so going through this process, our conclusion was we're not going to be able to walk into this room and say to you all, we've quantified the cost of mental health in our school system. We just it's too complex. But what we've also taken, and and this is work that I think was already recognized, both with our field partners and within the agency, is that there's actually real areas of improvement. We can get some traction on this by making improvement to some of our accounting and our data coding and then ensuring that the field is actually coding with fidelity because it will not surprise us to know that, like, a thousand flowers moving in the sun right now when it comes to coding. So that was important. It was it was, you know, sort of the failure was an important lesson and that there's more work to be done there. But the result of that is that we do have to come in to say, we were not able to sort of quantify this, and I know that our field partners were also trying to do the same thing, and and no one was gonna be able to get their names around that. But it was good to be able to identify who are all the different folks that are involved in this, what are all the different ways that we try to capture these costs, and that there is sort of an area of work. [Zoe Saunders ]: And I'd say overall, I I would imagine throughout the session, you will have data request for us. And so we'll be transparent with you around if there hasn't been consistent coding in certain areas. We just highlighted it for mental health. There may be some things we can use as a proxy, but we'll also have to be clear that about what we have and what we don't have. And as we've had conversations with the field, we started to say, this is really important for us to understand and quantify. We may need to do a different data collection. And we have had a lot of great success in partnership with the field in key areas, saying, yes. That's important. We're willing to spend an extra time doing that. But just just wanted to point that out overall because I think that's gonna be a broad trend. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: Yeah. And for example, we're actually doing that work right now. We're about to deploy a [Zoe Saunders ]: a class five data collection because we looked [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: at about three different proxies because Right. We know that's of interest to you all, of interest to us. We don't we don't collect that data. It's not something that we've ever collected. So we tried a bunch of different models, and then we finally said, no. We're actually going to have to ask everybody to provide this information. So that work is underway. [Zoe Saunders ]: And and in some examples like that, we could collect data, but it's not getting to the it's not answering the question that we're asking. Right? So it's it's too aggregated, and so we need a deeper dive. The next session so still the regional planning, we had a separate session just for school board members. The focus there was around on data reporting and what could we do as an agency to best support you. We've heard again that need for ten percent reliable data specific to our supporting budgeting decisions. As we walk through the data that we shared, board members expressed some concerns around the level of, data suppression. So we'll share with you, next week, our state assessment results. And some of our schools are very small, and so we actually have to suppress their data. These schools have access to that data, but it does limit our ability to have sort of comparative analysis. And then also limits ability to do some continuous improvement so that smaller schools know how another small school like them is doing that can plan together. So that was called out as a challenge. There's some challenges around outdated information. This is really around timing. We're working very diligently to change our timing so that we are, reporting data earlier specifically around state assessment data, but that shifts all of our data collection. And, we're working, very hard on that. In terms of inconsistent reporting across districts, I I think this goes back to and we haven't set as clear kind of goals as a state and benchmarks of success. And so because of that, there's some inconsistency as you're looking even in a supervisory union or one to another on how they're reporting out their performance and progress. So that was one just around overall data reporting, and that was related to school performance, you know, enrollment trends, extended returns, all of that, really the comprehensive overview. And then the second piece was very much focused on budget that we heard from board members. They were asking for more state resources to help explain our budget system. It is very complex, and we did three things really in response to that. In the next phase of our planning, when we actually went out to the public, we did a training on on our education funding system at a high level to provide an overview. We also produce the education funding report, which explains from us, this doesn't compare us to other states. And so that's a resource for you as well. And the third area is we contracted with new solutions k twelve to provide budget training in the field around strategic budgeting. We hosted sessions in December for that. That's what we learned from the the regional education planning session. We took all that, information, and we crafted our next phase with the the public engagement. And we really thought about what's most important to bring to the public engagement sessions. We we really pulled together the information from the regional planning, what was important to bring that conversation, and the educators were a important piece of that. So how we logistically structured this was wherever we had a public engagement session, we would have the focus group of student of our teachers before that. And it was regional, so even though we were hope we were hosting it at one school, it was then for the broader area. So as we talk about the educator focus groups, you can look forward. We provided the same background knowledge in terms of sharing data, and then we broke out into smaller groups. We had conversations first around academic support. And so this is really asking the direct question to our educators in the field. How can the agency of education best support you? We also talked about a new initiative, which we've launched called read or not, which is designed to support the implementation of act one thirty nine and promote literacy outcomes statewide. And we're modeling some new strategies as an agency through that effort to really provide more job embedded coaching and support. So we use that as a reference once they what about this is really helpful to you? What are areas that we need to, to refine and improve? We heard from our educators in need for consistent guidance from the AOE specific to supports and standards. There was a concern among our educators around the impact of the budget cuts on on teaching and learning in schools. We heard a very high value place on quality professional development opportunities and, really, ways in which they can apply that learning immediately. So not so much virtual learning, but really more of that on the ground support. We've heard from our educators that need for high quality pre k programs. They're talk they're very much noting a difference of students who are able to access pre k versus students who are not, and the value of of their being able, to focus in on our young learners, make sure they're ready to enter schools. We heard again, I mean, for additional supports for our special education students. They reflected on a number of teacher shortages being a challenge and also long wait list at therapeutic schools for the student that need support. And, overall, we've heard another theme around college and career from our educators in really ensuring that they can help their students to explore different pathways so that they can find their success and interest beyond education. The second question we asked in our focus group is around the nonacademic support. So what is needed? What are the conditions of success that need to be in place in your schools and in your classrooms to support student learning? And we've heard a lot that the schools are are doing more than educating students. Our educators are also meeting the the of their students that they're serving every day. And they talked a lot about having to meet their basic needs. Many are working to develop effective community partnerships in some parts of our state. That's harder to do because it's harder to access those partners. And so that that was a you know, I I think these were really impassioned conversations because our educators are realizing that our students really need that additional support. They talked about the challenges of housing and affordability and on some of the opioid epidemic and and other challenges that their students are experiencing. So they talked about mental health. We've mentioned that in the regional planning that definitely came out. We're sort of talking about our teachers. And then when we look at the the impact of enrollment, most of the the broad trends in the model that we're seeing have declined in student enrollment where we are seeing an increase. There have been different needs that emerged in terms of being able to best manage, you know, increasing cost of people. So educator support and additional AOE support. We've heard really you know, looking for the agency to be a very strong partner in education. You know, they're they're such a noble profession that our educators are going above. Really, you know, we're taking the opportunity to showcase what's really working well in our schools and in those success measures. We heard again that consistent guidance and support. When there's a lot of variability, it creates confusion. And so we're working very intentionally as an agency to do cross functional work so we can streamline our communication and training and support to their field. We've heard a lot too about the need to involve families and parents more as partners with them and how we can best do that in a way that can be accessible to parents. Because we also know many of our parents are working multiple jobs. They may not be available at the time that traditional times that schools can engage community members. So they they ask for support in that area and more professional development opportunities. We heard a lot about challenges with teacher recruitment and retention. So something that we'll share with you next week when we look at the data trend, we said we see a lot of disparity of differences in terms of future pay across our state, which does present some additional challenges with recruitment and retention. Within our districts, there's competition within across our state and with our neighboring states as well. Well, I don't know. Did you remember that? I did. So that's what we heard from our educators. I I really wanna thank them for taking time out. They stayed after school to really engage with us in this conversation and share their ideas and also the candor that everyone brought to these discussions. Some of them [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: even came to the public engagement session. They double do. That's true. Our data presentation again. I just [Zoe Saunders ]: couldn't. Yeah. Okay. It wasn't clear enough the first time. I don't I'm not sure. So moving in, then we went into our public engagement sessions. The and I wanna know if these were all hosted at schools or community organizations that invited us in. And so, again, that's just another partnership that we really appreciate in the field of being able to bring people in and have these discussions. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: And I just wanna also know something. I I think that you said it, but I wanna reiterate it. This was not just Zoe and John. So at every one of these sessions, we had a a pretty significant presence of AOE staff who were there, notes, who were if Annie, I wanna give him a shout out. [Zoe Saunders ]: There's some incredible support for the [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: logistics of this entire endeavor. And so it really was you know, we we actually had a large number of AOE staff that can only participated in their efforts. And if they weren't actually there with a specific task, they were just coming because they wanted to hear and and really be engaged in it. So I think that was really important that this really was a a broad team effort. And when we were doing our all staff meetings, those folks were reporting out as well. Like, this is what we heard. I mean and so that was, I think, really impactful. And and I also I want to acknowledge as as Zoe said, educators speak with a lot of candor, and I think that was also really good for our agency staff to be hearing directly [Zoe Saunders ]: from the folks that they work with every day. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: This is this is, you know, this is how we experience your support or your oversight, and this is the way that maybe we can improve. But, also, here's the thing you all do well, and we would like to see more of that. And so having folks directly out in the field interacting with educators and principals, I think, is invaluable, and we will continue to do so. We're really trying to set a new standard for how they're engaged. [Zoe Saunders ]: And we, you know, talk to us as we as we go into things and have these conversations to go in with the continuous improvement mindset and with humility. Right? It is really important to go in with openness and listening. And sometimes the feedback was hard to hear, and I really appreciate that our staff really listened to to heart. What what can we can we do to address? And in other areas, it was really great to hear the the affirmation that what we're doing is working. Right? So it's really so important to have done this with our entire staff. And I I think what was some really great moments is when we were hearing feedback. We'd love if the AOE did this, or have you thought about that? And then one of our team members would say, yes. And I'd love to do that, and I'm excited. And so Jill and I are like, let's do that. Let's do that. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: You are empowered. Yeah. [Zoe Saunders ]: I guess both of them. So those are exciting moments, right, where you start thinking people have some ideas that they really wanna be able to implement, and we're hearing that, yeah, this is the time that that's gonna be needed and will be valuable. And, so we had a lot of those moments as well, which was, really exciting and I think, rewarding part of this experience. So as we did our public engagement sessions, we asked people if they came in to identify the role so you can see we had a a great cross section of educators, parents, student and not as many students. We had separate focus group for students. We need pizza, though. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: We need to keep the students who need pizza. Yeah. Stress. [Zoe Saunders ]: Law for my Some legislators, so thank you for the you who came. Appreciate your involvement in business owners as well. So, again, we started this with our data presentation, explanation of our funding system. Everyone had the same background information as we went into this discussion. And then we broke out into focus groups and asked about first question was, how do you define student success? What does that look like and what not? What we heard is that students are safe, they're happy, they're healthy. There was a lot of conversation around really creating the joy of learning, and then sure our students are curious, lifelong learners, that they're excited and engaged. And they I know one member of the public said, I love I love it when my child comes home and is excited to tell me about something that happened at school that day. And how do we make sure that that's happening every day to engage in those conversations. We definitely heard a need to master core core fundamentals of academic success, but also those critical life skills and and thinking forward around those future ready skills that our students will need to be successful. We heard a lot about making sure that our students have opportunities to really pursue success after post secondary, that they're ready for that next step, and that we've given them those opportunities to explore your interest and connect that to their life after high school. And then those holistic measures, we talked about that a lot. A lot just really value a holistic measure of student success. The next question, I would say, though, it's very hard to find a student success. It's easy. And so, well, what does it look like? And at first, there's a little bit of crickets. Right? Because that's a big question, and it's hard for us to get all of that. Right? So one of you wanna look at that. Student. We'll get to Great. That's a fun We'll get to the student. Why we ask. Yeah. Students were pretty direct, and and we'll talk about that. Tactical. Yeah. So the next set of questions are okay. Well, again, what are those the opportunities and experiences? Right? So really get a concrete around this idea of equity. You know, when we when we talk about the fact that we have limited funding, and we wanna make sure that every child gets a well rounded educational experience, How do we define that? So we heard a lot about this conversation of equity. We heard that the foundational needs need to be met, that they need to be supported for social, emotional learning, and mental health, their behavioral needs. We heard a lot about differentiation, making sure that we were equipped to meet the individual needs of our learners. We heard about really having engaged hands on learning activity, expanded out the surreal world, but we are exploration and preparation programs. We heard a lot of that needs to do kind of cross curricular types of educational delivery where we really spark the connection about how, you know, literacy and social studies, science, and doing these projects that really pull all these pieces together to make them meaningful and relevant. Here's some really wonderful examples of how some of our schools are are doing like that. And then overall, we've heard again, in some areas, we do need to have a more unified and safe driven approach on this work area to make sure that there is that consistency and support to do the things that the schools are asking for and provide and their child's education. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: And one thing I would say, and and I I think we I don't think it's going to shock anyone in this room. But one piece of the listen and learn that I [Zoe Saunders ]: think was really valuable and particularly the public engagement sessions, [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: because there was a really a wide range of folks, you know, with different experiences. And and there was a lot of folks who hadn't had a kid in the system in a really long time. Right? And I think you all probably are having these conversations when you're talking to your constituents is that, fundamentally, school has changed from when we were in the building. And that what we really heard, that list of, of, you know, what should every student have, that's a really lengthy and complex list of things that we are asking schools to play a critical role in. Maybe not the only, you know, entity or or individuals that need to be involved, but that we we really do ask schools to do more and different than, you know, I think what a lot of us experienced. And I think that's important to sort of bring along the other adults that we're talking to because they're they're obviously the disconnect. Like, why is it, you know, so expensive? Why why why this, and why are we asking for more behavior interventionist? Well, it's just a different landscape than it used to be. And so recognizing that fundamental change, I think, is important. And then the next step is, is there a way that we can do this better? And I think that's kinda why everyone is is there to to talk about. [Zoe Saunders ]: And then the the next focus group was talking about budget sustainability. We did that question kind of at the beginning. What topic do you wanna cover? And one of the topics was budget, and either everyone can, went up, or no one can. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: Because no one wanted to talk about [Zoe Saunders ]: the budget. So it was kind of a mixed bag as we as we went across the state. But but we started by first talking about how do we measure student success? What supports are needed? And now let's talk about the budget because, ultimately, a budget is gonna be how we prioritize what we, focus on in terms of our education. So what we've heard was, you know, definitely, communities are facing, you know, very challenging, budget situations right now, to put based on declining enrollment, you know, rising costs in different areas. We did hear a need for increased resource sharing and conversations around regionalization for some services to to better maximize the the support and the expertise that we have in communities. We also I think it's interesting to have this conversation in light of some of the educator workforce shortages that we have. Right? In some cases, it's hard to hire for critical roles so that necessitate some of these broader regional sharing efforts. We also, definitely heard, a request for even more systemic considerations that some of these challenges may be beyond, the, control of the local community and needing to have more systems integration as we think about, coordinating services and support. We've had, coordination already with our sister agencies, in this work and and also participation from our our agents our fellow agencies in the listen and learn to really be thought partners in this work around how we can better do that alignment and integration. Mhmm. But we definitely heard, as you can see, again, this quote that in many instances, they're calling for more regional decision making because we are our system is so hyper local that is creating a lot of challenges to be able to deliver educational quality consistently. It's also creating [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: a lot of really hard budget challenges. And I would say this part of the conversation, it was I think this was hard for for folks. Like, they they want to talk about [Zoe Saunders ]: the budget, but one of [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: the things that really was here to me in these conversations is the complexity of the system and its highly, highly local nature makes it really hard to sort of answer the question when we say, you know, what would you do? How would you balance? We you know, part of our question was, like, we're seeing, you know, a long term trend of decreases in student enrollment and, you know, that mirrors the state demographics. Right? How do you balance that with, you know, the two slides prior? The desire for more, the desire for better quality, the desire for more opportunity. And it's it sort of stumps folks a little bit, and it's it should. Right? If we could have practiced that, we would have practiced that already. And so what it was really validating in some ways to me is that the complexity and high localization makes it really hard for folks who are clearly engaged. They're spending their time in the evening to spend his time with us and talk this through, but to try to come up with solutions and to without sacrificing those things that they just said were really key priorities for them, it sort of stumps them. And so they it was a really good conversation, but it was like, oh, there wasn't, you know, there wasn't one typical solution that sort of rose to the surface. Right? Because it's really falling back and all the levers have [Zoe Saunders ]: to do that. Yeah. I think that's right. And there's definitely a request to do more, launching more, but the decision that analyst kind of doing less. Right? That's the the reality. So as I mentioned, we we're hoping students would show up to the public engagement sessions, but I think they had other things to do after school that were they yeah. And we didn't have pizza, so that was the the critical flaw. So we decided we actually partnered with our the the principal's association to help us to to think about this. How do we organize it so that we can engage with our students? And we really have great partners with our principals and opening up their schools during the day where we could really engage students, in a meaningful way. And we add students to reflect on their current experience if they're in middle high school and also to think back on when they were in elementary school to give us that full perspective of their journey through the Vermont the Vermont education experience. So what we've heard come up clearly from the students is strength through their teachers and staff that they also felt like their teachers and staff were working really intentionally to build a strong sense of community, that they felt included, that they felt that they belonged. Other than that, some of the belonging was really important. Challenges that we've heard is the things there were behavior issues and unclear roles and consistency with how to manage behavior. So that is an area where as an agency, we'll think about how we can provide more training and support in this critical area. And related to this was the need for more effective restorative responses to harm and hard hold. We heard clearly that students want expanded learning opportunities. They want to be able to participate in internships, more real world experiences beyond the classroom, really thinking about how we're making learning applicable for our students and creating that exposure to career possibilities. They talked about wanting to have more advanced coursework. They're they actually ask for more record in many areas because they they want to be challenged. We heard students articulate that. I wanna have opportunities where I'm challenged and and stretching and letting them know that. I've been doing that in a way that's a project based and also personalizing custom to to what their interests are. And then, of course, you can see and then both, they also wanna have fun at school. Right? This is also just a big part of their overall development, and that culture and climate school is important. And, you know, an aspect of that is that there's a really well rounded curriculum. There's electives, and there's specials and clothes and things like that that they can participate, and that can then through their discussion as well. So we ask them to also think about the resources that are needed in schools to support their success. So they've reflected on the the need for high quality and skilled teachers, of course, and really emphasize that ability to build strong relationships with students. Again, that access to wide ranging learning opportunity, that challenging component they were looking for, to really, stretch and learn, to support their interest, real world connections. We've heard that a lot with this presentation. They also reflected on kind of a balanced need between both academic and mental health supports. So that was reflected also within the students at the mental health and wrap around needs. They talked about the overall conditions of the school and having a well maintained school that's accessible, inclusive, safe, and that that strong sense of community and being a kid and having fun. This quote is is talking about some very specific, very concrete. You know, what what do you want? I wanna be able to support that. I wanna be able to support yourself, have financial independence, and a job where you enjoy. Right? Really, really concrete from the students because they they wanna work not just work to survive, but work to really be able to leverage their talents and and experience that joy. So what's next? I've highlighted throughout this presentation what we've done, in response to some of the input that we've received. We have made very significant data infrastructure improvements and also built in new data validation processes that is really been done collaboratively with the field. And I wanna provide that because we very much appreciate our superintendents, principals, business managers, head of schools being involved in that work, to do that data validation. We also launched three Vermont, which is a new comprehensive statewide effort, to promote literacy outcomes. We have designed this to really support learners, all learners along the continuum from, you know, kindergarten, early education, all the way to twelfth grade and adult education as well. We are providing job embedded coaching in the field. We're also providing broader learning as support for learning communities across the state, and we'll soon be offering some additional tools and resources to families and caregivers to help reinforce. Part of this effort is also partnering with our higher education institutions and thinking about that coordinated support and teacher preparation as well. But we've done a lot with budget training and resources, though. I've already highlighted some of the initiatives that we've launched and we're we're continuing to make a partner in this area. And then the state assessment reporting and training, we recognize that the timeline is challenging for that data to be relevant and helpful to inform continuous improvement planning. So we're really making strides to accelerate that, and, also, we'll be offering some additional training so that there's greater clarity around how we are accepting student competencies based on, the Vermont, cap and really understand what types of questions you could put that are, are being asked, and, that training will be launching very soon. Now where we're going. So we're taking all of this input. It's helping to inform our strategic plan to be really focused on those things that matter most and are gonna make the biggest impact on our state. We have already a lineup of some additional data reports that we will be producing. We've been calling them topical reports because there's some deeper dives that we need to do in certain aspects of our system. So the reports that you can expect in the short term will be an overview of our special education system. We know there's been a lot of questions we've highlighted here that there's some increasing needs, so we will be producing that report along with about college and career readiness as well to the next in the hopper that we're working on to release. And all of the the timelines for our okay. Yes. Sorry. It's pre k. Pre k actually is going first, so we're gonna get pre k first. I get that. I thought that was done. There's still some editing. Okay. So pre k first, special ed in in college and career. And what we've done in all of this is really try to prioritize based on what we're hearing in the field and where the biggest questions are and what we need to share in order to inform decision making. We expect through our collaboration with you, you're gonna highlight some additional analysis that will be important, and we'll we'll also be prioritizing that as we collaborate. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: And I think one thing I would also highlight is that we were really moving to a new norm within the agency that when we release one of these reports, we're also releasing the source data with them. So when we rerelease the state profile report, if you go on our website list and learn page and you see the rerelease date profile, right underneath it is an open source data file. It's all in there. It's been validated and vetted by the field and really can become a source of information for your own analysis. And we're also trying to release with those reports what we're we're calling recipe cards. So when we give you a chart or graph, you're going to understand what, you know, what went into the recipe that that produced that so that you can also then do your own analysis. And that's really a standard that Mhmm. I Zoho has one hundred percent gets credit for, and it's we're really working to change that norm and culture within the agency and then also with our partners in New Deal. Yeah. And what we have discovered through this process that didn't know is that we collect three hundred different data collections every year. And now we're [Zoe Saunders ]: we are really committed to federal government Yeah. But are not necessarily used to inform, yeah, continuous improvement in our state. Right. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: We're going to use them. [Zoe Saunders ]: And so we're using them, and we're we're mapping different datasets that haven't been combined before. Right? So really begin to tell the full picture and understand, the the complexity of our system and to really target and drive, improvement efforts. And we've been really clear about using data. I keep saying this term, but using data to drive continuous improvement of that being really critical to this process about using data to support, to really help us all, and improving, ultimately, opportunities for our students. And with the the data transparency, we know that that's a critical piece, because we need to make sure that there is full transparency. Everyone understands the source data. They can recreate it so that there is more credibility around that to inform decision making. I I think that will be important also in your work and and [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: what committees do in that. Mhmm. And I think there is we want to sort of acknowledge that we're at the very beginning of that work and that we're really dealing with a lot of, sort of technical debt in this area, and it's really revealing, I would say, fragility across the entire system, not just in literally the IT infrastructure that generates this, but also the processes. And so that's it's it's the start of what I think will be really important transformation in what you all can expect and public can expect in terms of, you know, what does the agency produce in terms of data that's usable and clear and accurate. But there's a there's a lot there's a lot to do in this space, and so I think we've got a really good start. And then we've gotta do it and do it again and then do it again. And it you know, it's cultural change as well as, like, infrastructure. [Zoe Saunders ]: I think that and then how is this all connected, right, as we get into policy work? That's the key thing. So we have been sharing over the last few months what we've learned with governor Scott, and that certainly is important in informing the thinking. So as he shared yesterday, he put forward a a framework for a policy proposal. And some of what we've heard through the listen and learn is that there's so much complexity to our funding system that, it's creating a a lot of stress and anxiety, and, it's there's a a lot of out of it. It's not serving as intended. And so that the the rationale for for moving towards a foundation formula to have more predictability and also to have more equity in our system. Also, we talked about some issues of scale as we went through the presentation and and being able to deliver on those expectations. So that's a key component of this. And we've heard consistently across the date being clear on if we're gonna expect this as a date, how can our agency help to provide clearer guidance and support and guardrails for that? So it's not just with budgeting, but overall as we think about achieving our goals of of growing educational quality and and success. And then, of course, we we've heard you for some of the the challenges that you all have around property tax relief. And, so those are all how all of this fits in. And so with any, budget decision, it's about how do we prioritize limited funds, to deliver on our goals and hopes and aspirations for our student. So I think a lot of these qualitative things are important for us to take into account as we move forward in that type [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: of plan. And we don't wanna lose lose sight of our students as things get complicated and heated and and, you know, I I that's for Zoe and I, that is our focus and what we see as our goal in this larger conversation is how do we keep the student right there at the center of the conversation as as you [Zoe Saunders ]: all are doing really complicated work. And then these are some resources for you. So the agency's website, we have a page for the listen and learn tour. And within that, you'll see a number of our reports. The full summary report, you've been on there with all of the appendices. I'm sure you have not had time yet to read it, but a hundred fourteen pages that timely. And and so we did do a quick video too just a bit more digestible. That could be helpful to share with your constituents around kind of a high level thing that we've heard. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: True story. I was before we published it, I was reading the list and the summary report before bed and it was nice that time story for that night, and he turned to me and [Zoe Saunders ]: he said, mama connect, please just go to the meeting. It worked. So it's not just the entire It's scintillating. So I do appreciate, you know, you allowing us to come in and share what we learned across the state. It's really been helpful to us and it really informed our thinking and guiding our next steps. So I'd like to open up if you have any questions for us. [Peter Conlon ]: Thank you both very much. I appreciate the time you put into this and into the presentation. I might just ask a first question. Especially from what you heard from educators and especially with these sort of learn, listen, and then move, and then transformation, how do we get there? To me, a lot of that speaks to capacity at the AOE. Mhmm. I think that there's a lot and I think educators are asking for it. They're asking for the AOE to take the lead in helping them become better educators. I think that was what I was saying. It's it's a it's a role the AOE used to play more significantly before it was downsized back in the earlier two thousands. So can you talk a little bit how how this translates into what the AOE over the next couple of years might look like? [Zoe Saunders ]: So we've said from the beginning of the listen learn tour is that this should and will inform the development of our strategic plan and how we align ourselves as an organization to best meet the needs of the field. So our immediate next steps, you know, we've been sharing all of this with our staff. In certain areas, we've made different decisions around what to prioritize in terms of key initiatives and support. So some of that is reprioritizing efforts, and and we've been doing that along the way. And now we're moving into division planning where we're really setting up each division. We're bringing back here are the most important thing for us to be able to support. What is the role of your division in doing that? What is the capacity? How does that align with existing work? And so we're in the process of doing that. But, ultimately, there are questions around when we think about the overall governance and scale of our state around ensuring that there's a lining up in terms of the agency resources and ability and capacity to to meet the needs of the field. We have ramped up capacity in certain areas in anticipation of the needs, so we did ramp up capacity as it related to project and data analytics support. And we did that pretty early on in the summer, and then we're about to ramp up some support around academics because we've heard that there's been a strong call for for support from the agency in that area. But we wanna be thoughtful as we go down that path and making sure that we're really being responsible in terms of how we're aligning our work, maximizing efficiency, and then having those conversations around, you know, where we're getting additional needs or ways we need to deliver our work together to support that. And and, Pierre, one thing that [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: Zoe has spoken about really eloquently is we have a little bit of a strange thing happening in Vermont where the where the expertise resides is not really optimal. And so one of the things that we really are trying to do with the strategic planning and the listening learning and all of the sort of subsequent or educational transformation is to make sure that we have expertise at the right level. And and so it is great example of, you know, a a statewide special education director responsible for eighty thousand students is now responsible for less than a thousand students, but is making twenty thousand dollars more a year. So there's misalignment. When we talk about scale, we're not just talking about schools. We're talking about the scale all the way up and down the system. But we I very much to Zoe's point, we need to be thoughtful about what we're prioritizing, where we're prioritizing it, and we're making sure that we have the right people at the right level doing the right work. Think it's a really great one. [Zoe Saunders ]: I think the comparisons in the the conversation on the budget is not about just investing more. Right? It's not just about more staff. Right? It's about thinking about how we align our our work. And, really, the other piece of the puzzle when you think about having the right expertise at the right level, when you think about that in the context of our educator workforce shortage, it's really challenging to hire for some of these specialized roles. And so we do need to be thoughtful as a state about where those positions are are best served at a at a very local level, at a regional level, at a state level. I think these are all conversations that are gonna be really important as we think about how to support the overall system. But we're gonna be very as we have been so far, very methodical in walking through that and data driven and priority oriented as making those recommendations. [David Weeks ]: Thank you very much. No. Thank you for coming. I think everybody around the stables, but I wanna find the two of [Zoe Saunders ]: you Yeah. Yeah. Two weeks. [David Weeks ]: Look forward to that. And thank you for letting us to this make this virtual hearing. That's more often to waiting in the senate education. We're gonna meet secretary of the secretary, jointly with finance committee at times next week. We're not really supposed to come back together. So I guess, from good to bad, I have questions from and members of the senate, you know, we got a question, but it's issue. I'll raise your money. [16 seconds of silence] [Zoe Saunders ]: Yet. [Peter Conlon ]: Yeah. Hold table, anybody for follow-up questions? It's a it's a big report. Yeah. A lot was gathered. So If I [David Weeks ]: could so first, I appreciate the the update in the report. You did mention that when you're briefing that we're at the very beginning. And the reality is we learned two years ago as freshmen. Train's already moving a hundred miles an hour. We're all jumping on board trying to figure out where it's going. If we know enough now to know to start pulling levers, Okay. See, nodding heads and Yeah. That's why I'm just looking about it now. I can be so comfortable and we're not moving too fast. We're gonna start moving bar. I'm not sure. I just wanna make sure you're comfortable with, you know, where we are now. Will you will we know enough so far? [Zoe Saunders ]: I I think you'll start to have confidence around that as we meet with you every day. You know, for the past six months, we've we've made a a lot of progress, and you're gonna see that. I mean, just this report being able to travel around the state, get this input, and be able to reflect it back on the priorities, I think, is a significant milestone. You're gonna also hear from us over the next two weeks. We've made some really critical measurable progress as we've done research, in other states of best practices in our own analysis and how some of these strategies and policies can work in the Vermont context. So so, yeah, we feel very prepared to come forward with some concrete recommendations that are based on data, based on understanding Vermont, and based on research. When we say we're at the beginning, we understand that this work is a multiyear effort, and we'll be mindful of that as we can lay out those recommendations. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: And Zoe has a great price, so I'm just thinking most yeah. [Zoe Saunders ]: I'm quoting you a lot. You are. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Zoe's not understood. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: We needed to move slow to move fast. We're ready to move fast. [David Weeks ]: Yes. [Zoe Saunders ]: And we need to move fast. We understand that. There's an incredible sense of urgency. [Peter Conlon ]: We're gonna be partners in that in that speed. Yeah. That's all. Yeah. We have [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: to get Which role [Zoe Saunders ]: is to explain. And I I think part you know, part of the challenge is that this work is very complex, and I think we will need support and partnership around keeping our arms around the whole. So it's kind of easy to piecemeal components of this and talk about let's talk about mental health, or let's talk about the funding, or let's talk about governance or equality. It all needs to be considered together. And I think that's something too that the commission on the future of public education also articulated is that we really need to look at this that most of that's the approach and make sure that there's a correlation. [Peter Conlon ]: Again, you know, for our two committees so the secretary proposed kind of a schedule of briefings. Some of them are finance based on market policy based. We created a schedule in here as well for the policy type of things. We'll definitely want to include you and if this space works for all of you, we'll probably stick with it. It's overwhelming. We're trying to work this group together as much as possible. [Zoe Saunders ]: In anticipation of our our next session review, do you have any specific questions or areas of inquiry that you wanna make sure that we can address as we we'll be working together really [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: closely here. A lot, and so we're happy to kinda [Zoe Saunders ]: But we wanna customize things to make sure that it's it is also valuable to you. [David Weeks ]: Service? Thank you. So you talked a lot about data. Start off with full presentation about data, data, data. What we're really interested in is not pure data, but synthesize, summarize, conclusions, etcetera. That's what you you know, if you're if you wanna something you could provide us, help us come up to speed with you, it's those summarize reports. That would be very helpful. [Zoe Saunders ]: Okay. Excellent. That's helpful. No. And in that vein, I would say from today's session, what we heard that we need to really think about and prioritize is being able to, exam college and career opportunities, ensure students have a core set of of electives and encouragement opportunity. I think we also talked a lot about early childhood education being really important. So those are some things that I think are are very critical from what we learned and also the fact that there's a lot of mental health needs. And so how do we support those? So all of that is scattering into as we move forward, how we make recommendations based on the needs that we've heard. [David Weeks ]: Sorry. Will you Sorry. I apologize to family. I'm not sure where we was. But I see three components of we're here. We need to be here, and we set policy for education. And what we've been told in the first two weeks of discussion, work about getting the education tax rate down. So do you see within how how many weeks away are you from having a timeline in your strategic plan with the goals objectives for things to be Yep. Just gonna be important, I think. [Zoe Saunders ]: So I think there's two parallel things that are happening now. We're continuing to develop our strategic plan, and there's some key policy recommendations that will come forward that will and also inform how the agency needs to be able to align itself to support. And so in that I tried to run a schedule, and you can see that we're tracking towards the governor's budget address to have a lot more detail around the this policy framework and being intentional that every time we're looking talking about a specific topic area that we can start to make connections to what are those important policy considerations. [Jill Briggs Campbell ]: And so the work is big. Yeah. Intentionally, with each of those sessions, we're pointing to an aspect that's in the the proposal that will be at the budget address. Right. And and I think there was some there may be some concerns about, like, what level of detail is going to be ready in this, and we're saying it's it's a full proposal with the model and the analysis and then highlighting for you all, you know, these are key areas of policy consideration and discussion. Right? So what we're going to be putting forth is comprehensive. It's modeled. It's research and evidence based. But there is also still pieces that need really to be discussed and and real consideration to be given. So it's not every single aspect of it, but it's really good. And [Zoe Saunders ]: we started with this because every piece kind of goes back to this. Right? Because what's so important as we're talking about education policy, it helped them to the Vermont content. Yeah. We're not in a situation where we can just say, okay. Whatever this state does, we're gonna plop into Vermont. That's not gonna work. And so this is a really important foundation to understand how we can take a best practice that has been really effective in another state and think about how we could modify that to work here in Vermont. So the listen and learn is really helping to provide us that framework. We're gonna keep coming back to that thing. Well, here's what we learned. Here were the challenges. Here are the other things we need to prioritize in our state. So this is a a foundation, to that work because I I know that it's challenging when you kinda get a cookie cutter, you know, statute from another state. It's like this won't work in Vermont. This this work is gonna help us do that customization. [Peter Conlon ]: Pretty sure. If nothing else could be Friday again. All that, [David Weeks ]: I'm sorry. [Peter Conlon ]: I won't hesitate to say [Zoe Saunders ]: Friday. I [Peter Conlon ]: won't hesitate to say we can kick him back up here and now [David Weeks ]: then. [Zoe Saunders ]: Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you.

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SmartTranscript of House Education- 2025-01-10 - 1:00PM

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