SmartTranscript of House Education - 2025-01-31 - 10:30 AM

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[Chelsea Myers ]: And you are live. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Welcome to House Education, annual day of January twenty twenty five. We have a number of items on the agenda for today. This morning will be in our final moments in this committee room, and this afternoon, we're over to civilian. We'll start it off talking about [Witness Bill Kimball ]: a a [Chair Peter Conlon ]: topic that continues to come up as we discuss education transformation at a scale, that word we're taking all the time. Anyway, I'm gonna turn it over to Chelsea Meyer from the superintendent's association to give us a little more insight on this. It's all yours, hon. [Chelsea Myers ]: Yeah. Hi, everyone. Chelsea Myers, executive director of Vermont Superintendents Association. In a second, I have superintendent Bill Kimball on with me as well to eliminate some of the more practical elements of the research that I'll kinda go over and cover today because, ultimately, anything that is put in place needs to be implemented, and he has a lot of experience in that realm. What motivated me to kind of look deeper into the research on scale is the considerations in the governor's proposal with a pretty large consolidation effort around five school districts. And what struck me is that it was based around the Vermont Superintendents Association regions, which we know are not necessarily grounded in anything. They were just formed as a reason to bring together superintendents. And so that spurred me to want to look at, well, what does the research really say about district size? We've already been having conversations about class size very regularly with superintendents for the last two years and what that looks like. And I also threw in some of the research about school size as well, though, that one's a little bit more mixed. But with that, I'll ask Bill to introduce himself and a little bit of his background. [Witness Bill Kimball ]: Thank you, Chelsea. Can everyone hear me fine? [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Sounds good, Bill. Thank you. [Witness Bill Kimball ]: Thank you, representative Collin. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Bill Kimball. I'm the superintendent of schools for the Maple Run School District. And before I, you know, before I give a little bit I'd just like to give a little bit of my past for those who don't know me. I've been here at Maple Run for the past six years. But prior to that, I was in the Washington Central Unified Union School District right before it merged as a superintendent for seven years. And prior to that, I was a central ops administrator and teacher for approximately twenty years. Let's just say that without counting back. I wanted to really say that my experience has been working with communities and school boards on instructional sizes throughout, not just my superintendency, but when I was a curriculum director as well in Orleans Southwest. And it really the structure of schools and districts really impacts the class size and really the instructional delivery that students receive. I have experience working in elementary schools as small as sixty kids and supporting them, and then up to the existing pre k eight schools that we have here in Maple Run of seven hundred, seven hundred and fifty, and our high school of nine hundred. And those instructional sizes for schools and for classes impacts how we can serve kids the most. So, I know that we'll be talking about that during today. So I just wanted to kinda give you that background as well as my doctoral studies is examining the intersection of superintents and communities in rural Northern New England and how that impacts what we can do to to improve our schools for our children. So I'll leave it there, Chelsea. [Chelsea Myers ]: Alright. So I put together some slides since I realized that a five page document is pretty done. I will say the kind of, substance is in that paper and less so on the slides, but I'm gonna try to cover it in-depth anyways. So, the size and scale of educational structures, class size, student to teacher ratios, school district size, and school size are often considered influential factors in shaping the quality of instruction and overall student outcomes. However, research on their direct impact remains mixed. Their effectiveness is deeply intertwined with factors such as teacher quality, that's a big one, resource availability, and the unique needs of local communities. In rural areas, for example, geographic necessity adds another layer of complexity as sparsely populated regions often face challenges such as small enrollments, long transportation distances, and limited access to specialized staff or resources. Balancing educational quality with efficiency and affordability requires careful consideration of research and contextual factors. This brief explores how instructional scale can be considered to address these intersecting priorities using research and practical input from Vermont superintendents. Policy decisions in the twenty twenty five legislative session should balance quality and efficiency. They must be able to be implemented with fidelity. The recommendations in this brief offer a sensible step related to instructional scale towards those core principles while Vermont invest time and resources in a long term achievable vision. And what we're trying to say there is that this might not necessarily be an end state, but we feel like it is a potentially good starting place in terms of a achievable first step in when we look at efficiency and move towards quality while maintaining quality. So we'll talk a little bit about district size and governance, school size, class size, and then wrap it up. We just talked about the intro, so I won't go into that more detail. Research on school district size suggests a very complex and underexplored relationship. So there is research out there. There's not a whole lot of research, but there are some general trends from the research that does exist. Overall, district consolidation alone is not a complete solution, and it should be paired with additional measures to enhance quality and efficiency. Research on district size paints a picture of a u shape around efficiency. So very, very small, not super efficient. There's, like, a midrange that are quite efficient, and then a once you hit a certain limit, it less efficient, more bureaucratic. It requires more transportation needs. According to Vermont sorry. Studies indicate that smaller districts typically face higher per people cost due to inefficiencies. And And according to Vermont education profile report, supervisory districts or unions with less than a thousand fifty long term average daily membership spent twenty six thousand, and those with greater than two thousand spent twenty one thousand. Please note that this does not consider weights or equalization, which is a strong policy choice in Vermont, so we should certainly compare it that way. However, very large districts may encounter diseconomies of scale where the benefits of increased size are outweighed. Research study found that consolidating small districts can reduce per people cost, and the research suggests that the most significant cost savings comes from one very small districts merging rather than really large districts merging. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Chelsea, if I could just interrupt for a second and ask, when we use the term consolidation Yeah. Are we talking about strictly governance, or are we also talking about physical buildings? [Chelsea Myers ]: Yeah. So that's an important point to point out. They researchers suggest that there is not a whole lot of really solid research around the interaction between school building size and district size. So they haven't done a good job of kind of marrying the research between school building size and district size. So this particular research is just talking about district size rather than the actual school size of the buildings in there. Or number of buildings. Or number of buildings. Correct. So an additional study looked at economies of size and suggests that the optimal district size for minimizing cost for pupil while maintaining educational quality appears to be in the two thousand to four thousand doll taller four thousand student range. They also find that diseconomies with scale may begin at about fifteen thousand students, and another study in Kansas, which is a more rural population, found that that might, start the diseconomies might start to emerge around ten thousand students. It's important to note that while consolidation may lead to cost savings in some cases, it's not guaranteed. The education commission of the states in twenty twenty four highlighted that transition costs such as those for new facilities, transportation, and integration can offset potential savings. Additionally, the impact of educational quality must be carefully considered alongside potential cost efficiencies when evaluating district size changes. The Vermont adequacy study, or otherwise known as the PICUS report, cites a prototypical district size of three thousand nine hundred determined by grouping eight schools, four elementary, two middle, and two high schools at their stated ideal school size. So Pygis, is actually creating a district model based on ideal school size rather than necessarily around, district size as far as I can tell from the report. The study also contrasts its prototypical district size with national averages, which fits around three thousand seven hundred and thirteen students in the fall of twenty sixteen is the recent is the date that they cited. As we learned through the implementation of Act forty six, district consolidation is very politically complex and logistically complex. You all have been highlighting a lot of those complexities and how significant law changes would need to be to consolidate, particularly around redistricting. Vermont school districts currently have different operating configurations related to the grade levels they do or do not operate, leading to Vermont's out of district tuition program. These configurations lead to greater complexity, collect fiscal controls, and increase ancillary needs, such as transportation and delivery of special services. I do want to point out that I hear from a superintendent that works, for a district that has is completely non operating. So they have no schools. They have just tuition, and they are having a tremendous time trying to sell their budget to their community because they've reached the excess spending penalty but have no way to make any controls over the physical environment because every single one of their students is tuitioned. So that's just an example of the the less fiscal control element. The education funding system explained report describes some supervisory unions have more than one school board, which is a very rare structure elsewhere in the country. Some supervisory unions can have between two to seven school boards depending on the number of school districts in their region with between ten and seventy eight total school board members. On average, supervisory unions have one board member for approximately every seventy five students. Though school board members are effectively volunteers, this large and multifaceted governance structure often requires significant administrative time and resources to support, including multiple board meetings a month per central office staff and considerable resources to support budgeting across multiple school districts. Time and resources that could be allocated to instructional leadership and other functions to support education quality. As a comparison, according to the New Hampshire School Boards Association, New Hampshire has approximately nine hundred school board members serving about one hundred and sixty five thousand students. Vermont has a symbol similar number of school board members and about half the students. Mhmm. Data from the US Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics reveals that administrative expenses account for about six point seven percent of school district's budgets nationwide, a slight increase from six point six two decades earlier. Recommendations related to school district size should help Vermont realize economies of scale in central offices, allowing for greater efficiencies in role specialization. Increases in federal and state regulations and reporting requirements directly impact the administration's role. Defining these functions for central office could inform effective and efficient staffing models. And just to add a little commentary to that, we hear from superintendents that serve in really small districts that they have very small central offices. And so you have a superintendent that is a curriculum director, an HR professional, and they're spread very thin and not allowed to really specialize in what role they're particularly good at. So specializing as you get bigger at scale is particularly productive in terms of realizing efficiencies in central offices. Bill Chelsea. Do you wanna [Witness Bill Kimball ]: Yeah. Yeah. I was wondering if I can give a little bit into that. So in my work experience, I've worked in central offices for about a thousand students up to what I currently have now, about twenty seven hundred students here at Maple Run. And I think we have to define a little bit the central office and centralized services. I think those are two different things, and people usually have conflict between what that means. I see that right here in Saint Albans just this year in our budget developmental process. I can tell you that at Maple Run, we have about four percent for administrative overhead, and let me define that a little bit. We have I call the administrative overhead our curriculum department, our human resources department, and our business department and superintendent's office. When we look at other where we've been able to find efficiencies, and it looks like we're expanding central office, is in services to students and really specialized services. We have just this week launched a middle level alternative program because we were seeing for from about twenty to twenty five students in Maple Run across our district a real need for alternative education that we had typically paid out to independent schools for therapy and behavioral reasons. And those usually have a price tag of about a hundred to a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars per student when you combine the transportation and tuition costs. We found we've been able to do that cheaper. I know you in the past years, you've seen those presentations either from Lynn Coda and other of my colleagues who've done the same thing. Having one board to do that with really made it about a two meeting decision. After we present the information to the board and we're able to say for our three pre k eights, how do we do this together? I can remember doing the same thing at, Washington Central when I was there, and we were doing it for the high school. And it was easy for the high school because there was one high school. But when we started talking about this across the elementary schools with five boards then, it was a lot harder with the governance because it was taking the time to get everyone on board and educated about why it was. Everyone wanted best for every kid in the system. That was the baseline. But it was about the how and how do we do that and how do we do that in our communities. The district size and governance, we can really find efficiencies and I have found that as I've moved up from a thousand student supervisory union in Hardwick all the way to where I am now and with having that one board. I can give you other examples of that, but those are ones right now that we're able to provide services and and do those in a more economically efficient way and then be able to individualize to student needs because we can find like students. And I did it on a special education. I could talk about the same thing for students who are interested in a technical career or have a passion for theater. I mean, I can just go on in different areas, where we've been able to find efficiencies across, and that one of the other things that Saint Albans has for is our proximity. Our three pre k eights are all within a fifteen minute drive of each other. So, but within that district, that that that that makes it doable. And that's doable in other rural areas as well. So [Chelsea Myers ]: So what are the policy recommendations currently in terms of district size and governance? First is determining the ideal district sizes be included in district quality standards that align with research. Our recommendation is that this should be set at a minimum of two thousand to four thousand students. The agency of education should work with school districts to support the movement toward the ideal district's sizes over a reasonable timeline and coordinate this effort with other requirements in the DQS and education quality standards. This will require a close review of current law related to merging school districts to optimize efficiency while allowing for I'll also say that it there are instances in which places do want to merge but do not have the proper facilities to be able to do it or to, yeah, combine elementary schools. They just don't have enough space to absorb all the kids in the other elementary school. So there are some real realities in terms of our infrastructure that influence these policy recommendations. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Just saying, if you don't mind, I'm gonna stop you right there. You One of the things we struggle with in sort of a big massive concept implementing it is sort of a tearing it down, building it up, and all of the little details that that go with that are frankly overwhelming. This recommendation to sort of use an existing system of DQS, which is actually for Relatively Renew. How how is your understanding of sort of how that would work mechanically? [Chelsea Myers ]: Yeah. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: So let's say they they make these recommendations in DQS, then what happens? [Chelsea Myers ]: Yeah. So I I think that, though the DQS currently doesn't have what people would call teeth, people generally want to follow the law and will do what they can to move towards that. And, what I think is important in any policy proposal moving forward is an understanding that we need to realize the actual realities on the ground of infrastructure needs, of district boundaries. Just drawing lines, as you all know, will not be effective in actually creating scale or opportunity for kids. What we learned in act forty six. Two is that governance change alone is not going to necessarily result in moves towards, for example, consistent quality of process, supervisor union, or school district, and it doesn't necessarily result in changes to building configuration. So things need to be coupled together. And you're right. Is DQS the right mechanism? I'm not positive about that, but I think it provides a place in which we currently define district efficiency and quality. And so should we be leveraging that tool, which, again, is currently what what we have for district efficiency and quality, to move towards supporting districts and and regions even in realizing some of these research backed efficiencies of size and scale. So But [Chair Peter Conlon ]: if if you were to kind of take this recommendation and and do a deeper dive into it, we probably need to look at the teeth issue Yeah. And the answer as usual is in the capacity to sort of take this and and make it happen as well. [Chelsea Myers ]: Yeah. And I think, taking a really close look at geographic necessity again, like, we have some definitions of geographic sparsity. What I hear from administration administrators is that there are there's, like, kind of the the statistics of it all, but then there's also just the direct how long is it on the bus. Like and just thinking about what really is geographic necessity and what is not and defining that more clearly would really help with some of the attempts to gain scale in the field that are already happening. Again, there's a lot of barriers to these efforts that I think people want to be able to offer and afford the same program of studies as their neighbor, but just there are some current realities that make those efficiencies harder to realize. So I know that's not a clearly defined answer, and open to further discussion about, like, what the correct mechanism is. We simply leaned on DQS because of the the rollout around efficiency. It seems like an opportune time that if that is the framework that AOE is using to assess efficiency at the district level, then perhaps it's a tool in which we can also move towards [Chair Peter Conlon ]: some I I really appreciate that. We've been I think all of us just think about how we make things happen, struggle with, like, is there a way we can work within the system that we currently have to make change without having to re tear apart and rebuild it? Yeah. We have the Chelsea, come down. [Witness Bill Kimball ]: Chelsea, can I add something? [Chelsea Myers ]: Sure. [Witness Bill Kimball ]: Yeah. I I think it's a great question about the accountability, and I think it's it I one of the things that I use a lot in my work is accountability, authority, and responsibility, and all three have to go together in a system, and knowing and making that clearly defined. It I think that I agree with Chelsea about the DQS as the place to start, and I think it's a great question about the accountability and how we define that and how we put together a system that monitors that is critical. As a superintendent for a school district, I actually I want accountability. I think it actually provides our systems of structure, and I work with our board on that all the time. But in Vermont's current system, the the highest place where there's accountability for myself as a superintendent is the school board. And, so I think it's defining what role does the state have and what role does the agency have in that piece. [Chelsea Myers ]: Yeah. And, superintendents want change, and this doesn't necessarily represent again, I wanna reemphasize, like, an end state to governance change. It's, like, while we're building the ship, what are some things that can be done in an effective manner that manner that doesn't totally, implode school quality. So just really thinking about that intentionally. Again, maybe this isn't the final end all be all, but could this be a starting point that is grounded in the research that we do have, currently available. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: I'm gonna interrupt one. You said that, Bill, you said accountability, authority, and what was the third? [Witness Bill Kimball ]: Responsibility. I talk to my team all the time about how do you pass that down to the lowest parts of the system so that for myself as a leader, who am I accountable to? What am I responsible for? And what do I have authority to do? And I think about that framework constantly in Maple Run because if I take away someone's authority as their as say, if I take away a principal's authority as the superintendent, then I just took on their responsibilities, and then they have no accountability. But all those had to be clearly defined. Do we have it perfect? Not yet. But we seem to keep that seems to be the central tenants of my leadership team. Do we talk about that a lot? [Chelsea Myers ]: The second element of the recommendations is there to require the reconfiguration of supervisory unions into unified school districts in response to different district district operating structures require that each newly formed school district designates up to three high schools, public or approved independent schools outside of the district to serve as a public high school for mergers involving districts with nonoperating grades. You already have a reference in statute. It's just not required to look at legislative language there, which is in the paper. Again, school boards are largely volunteers. We're very grateful for their service. When you get to an s u structure, you're adding a lot of governance complexity. And so thinking about that as a step towards some more efficiencies in the systems and what that means for the overall long term vision for what the delivery model looks like, we feel like is an important step. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Can I add on to that and maybe have Bill comment? I I worry about districts that have maintained the SU structure with multiple school boards and all of that just in terms of attracting and retaining high quality school leaders. I look at North Country that has been very lucky by having two homegrown superintendents in a row who embrace that structure. Mhmm. I worry about what happens when they that transition comes to a close. [Chelsea Myers ]: Bill, you have thoughts? [Witness Bill Kimball ]: Yeah. I do have a thought. I think that will be harder to attract candidates. I I work with an organization outside that's within New England that helps do superintendent searches. And they have told I'm a board member for them, and they say it's a lot harder to find candidates for a district that has multiple boards than a district that has a single board. And I know that my work has gotten more focused on students by serving one board than it did multiple boards. I spent much more time serving board members. [Chelsea Myers ]: Yeah. And a lot of that those resources then get, put towards instructional leadership and, hopefully, improvement in quality. And yeah. Should we move on to school side? Yeah. Any other questions about district? Alright. I really like this quote when it talks about the research of school size because I think it's important. The concept of school size is somewhat nebulous. It actually represents an amalgam of effects rather than just a raw number or a single effect. Size is important because it catalyzes conditions in terms of school climate, curricular offerings, student participation in extracurricular activities, student self-concept and self esteem, teacher student relationships, homeschool relationships, and student opportunities to learn and grow. All of these have important roles to play in determining student outcomes. And so what that quote means to me is that school size is only as important as the opportunities that it awards. And so there is some research around what that might look like, but we really have to be cognizant of, are we making recommendations for the sake of making a size, or can we take a closer look at what additional opportunities would be afforded at different school sizes and at a cost that is acceptable to taxpayers? So in the review of fifty seven studies, researchers found that the optimal rate, students sorry. Reading off the slide is not a good idea because I can just see it. I'll go back to here. There we go. In their review of fifty seven studies, researchers found an optimal size of five hundred students per elementary schools and one thousand for secondary schools. They advise reducing these numbers to three hundred and six hundred for schools with high proportions of disadvantaged students. Another study found that students learn more in middle sized secondary schools than smaller or larger high schools. I do wanna point out that the high school conversation is, in my opinion, quite clear when talking to superintendents. The opportunities afforded in, not large high schools, just, kind of medium sized high school, not super small high schools are really stark. The differences in the program of studies are really quite remarkable in some cases, and I've seen side by side of those comparisons. You know? The difference between multiple world languages and one or two world languages, full complimentary of sports and activities and very few offerings. So, I think you really do see the difference at the high school level of what those programs of studies and offerings look like, and I certainly can bring in a couple of superintendents to talk more about that if there is a need in the future. So both very small and very large schools are negative negatively related to school quality. Vermont infrastructure needs are staggering. Topography and current district configurations make achieving optimal school size difficult, which I've talked about. I don't need to tell you the cost figures of the facilities needs again. They're very large. So even when school districts want to reconfigure, facility size and condition can limit potential. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Just quick question for two. Both very small and very large schools are negatively related to school quality. Yeah. Do we have any schools that come up that would fall under the definition of very large school? No. [Chelsea Myers ]: Any thoughts before I go to policy recommendations, Bill? [Witness Bill Kimball ]: Yeah. I do I do have a couple there, Chelsea, that I'd like to kinda add in. I think you I was gonna talk about the middle school, so let me talk more about the elementary schools. When I see really small elementary schools, I I have personally experienced as a parent, and I have seen other parents experience when their children may be one of very few either by gender or by other classifications outcasting. So when there's class sizes of maybe when a school is so small and it might have grade ranges of fifteen to twenty kids, but there might only be four or five boys in that grade range or four or five girls in that grade range. There can be there isn't a way to balance that out. I could say that I said that with gender. I could say the same with with racial or so co social economic status or with any of the other historically marginalized groups. The other thing is one of the things that we know in the classroom that happens, and when you have small schools, you tend to get the small class sizes, which we'll talk about in a minute, but is that you lose the diversity of thought in the classroom. After the teacher, one of the most powerful influences on student learning is the collaboration that happens among students. And so when you have these really small school sizes, you tend to either have to combine grade ranges and or have really tiny small classes. So it affects that diversity of thought and that collaboration that happens among students. Not that it can't happen, but it's very hard on teachers, and it makes it difficult responding to special needs of individual students with smaller schools. In Vermont, we've been lucky, I think, with some of the sharing that's happened in between schools with staff, but that doesn't make it optimal and and staff I I know even in a district of our size in Maple Run, we have a few staff that are doing that and spending time during their day in cars. So that can, you know, if we can try to get the school size to a certain size, we can instead of having a point two or a point four someone, we can have a one point o f t e and they can spend their whole diet time focused on kids. And so that's cool. And I've really experienced that from working as I've said in my intro from very tiny elementary schools of sixty up to service pre k eights right now up to seven hundred and fifty. And we've been able to develop other programs for schools. An example is the Strings program that we've been able to put in place here in Maple Run, since our merger because of finding those efficiencies within the school buildings. [Chelsea Myers ]: Alright. Policy recommendations for school size. You're gonna see again that we make a recommendation to set, the ideal school sizes to be included in the district quality standards. You could also also choose to write it as a minimum. We think the infrastructure needs right now might prohibit the minimum set standard, but that is certainly a policy decision and set it at three hundred students, for the minimum and, six hundred for secondary schools as a minimum. The agency of education would then work with schools to support movement towards those ideals and, should focus efforts on secondary schools first. Again, thinking about those really significant differences in programs of study. Now that I talk it out, this should probably say minimum not ideal because there's nothing that says that schools that are larger than that are not good models. So I would change that in the text. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Yeah. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you. But I'm [Chelsea Myers ]: just curious. In this recommendation, do you have any sense of how many schools or regions wouldn't be able to meet those minimums? And I'm thinking about the small rural elementary schools much more than the high schools because I think with high schools, the transportation issue is much less challenging than with elementary. Did have you looked at that at all? Not in any, like, comprehensive way. Again, I think we really need to take a look at what is geographic necessity and what is not Before. Like, really defining, like, necessity or not or or, like, geographical barriers or not. A lot of the times, the sparsity research is, for example, like, designed to think about weights. Right? And lots about the how long are you on the bus or, like, what are the considerations for teachers or, things like that. So I think a concentrated conversation about, like, how you all want to define geographic necessity is gonna be crucial for that question of, like, can we or can we not, in certain circumstances. Of course, like, up in the northeast kingdom, there will be instances in which, some of these conditions cannot be met, without really, getting into those communities and figuring out a way to help improve quality opportunities. A lot of people are working with or not a lot. Several of them up in the Northeast Kingdom look at New Hampshire and try to share services and things like that. You'll hear about in the BOCES testimony that some of the limitations is, like, geographical geographical isolation, and so they're looking for, like, support from New Hampshire, for example. So there's certainly nuances and examples where some of these conditions maybe cannot be met, but there are definitely places where I think that they could be met, and are not being met. And some of that is about infrastructure. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: You're right, Leah? [Speaker 3 ]: One other number that I would be interested in seeing, and this might be, like, really premature. I admit that. But is if we were to implement these numbers right now, how many like, could the superintendents figure out how many staff, teachers, parents they would have to let go based on these numbers? [Chelsea Myers ]: May maybe we could get, like, some anecdotal, like, situation specific information about that. I think it would be very difficult on a widespread scale. I'm gonna turn to Bill too because I know a lot of superintendents, and this is not the case across the board, have really tried to use things like attrition and buyout. Like, I'm asked weekly, like, for, information about buyout plans and things like that. And, so, like, making it more of a voluntary thing. Again, I'm not saying that it's across the board, that it's not happening that people are could potentially lose jobs through this fiscal environment and any potential future changes. But they do work very hard to use methods that look at attrition and optional buyouts. And So smart text. [Witness Bill Kimball ]: Yeah. Chelsea, thanks. I last year, our board looked at me because we knew we had in Frank in Maple Run, we're one of two school systems in Franklin County that passed our budget on the first vote. And we narrowly passed it. And so the board directed me right away to say, hey, we know it's gonna be a tough budget here this next year. We know that eighty percent of our budget is human resources cost. So you need to start looking at places, but we want you to use and I've used it in my career because in Washington Central, we lost over two hundred students while I was there. So using attrition as a method for changing the number of staff we have, and we've been pretty successful with that. I'm not sure that we'll be able to keep that momentum going into this next fiscal year. And so when you think about building schools at three hundred and six hundred, it's easy to build a spreadsheet to do that. It's not hard to do that, but it's very theoretical. And if you don't define first what you term as a quality education for your students, like, that needs to be done first before you go build that spreadsheet because that's gonna tell you the programs that you wanna have. And and we don't I I think every locale I know in in Saint Albans, we've worked hard, and we did when I said Washington Central to say what's our where are the where are the district's goals for our students, and then what's the strategic plan behind that before we went and built the staffing? We can build a a staffing model, but if we don't know what we're building it towards first, it's hard to tell you how many teachers. When we get into the paraeducational world, we could do some modeling off of our student needs. But then it really I know hitting the ground, it really comes down to those individual education plans for students. And that's where the paraeducator piece comes in, and that is pretty variable in the state of Vermont from my experience. Because you're doing that as special education law requires. You're doing that at the table with a team of educators, parents, and maybe outside service providers as well. So, I know we can we give you some rules of thumb? Definitely. But we couldn't give you the actual. It's a theoretical exercise, if that makes sense. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: And a reality in this would be it would take so many years to get to this because of construction and some of the other things that the tool of attrition Yeah. As opposed to people actually losing their jobs would probably be well utilized. Yeah. And [Witness Bill Kimball ]: and and that's what we're doing here in Maple Run. We know where we'd like to be. We're not there yet, and we're trying to use attrition to change that. And it's actually it's been successful for the past three years. [Chelsea Myers ]: And in general, right, we we want, good educators in the system. We know that nationally, we're you're projecting even more of a workforce shortage around teachers, so I think that's all within the consideration. Does that mean that everyone would have the same exact job in certain regions? Maybe not, but, I think that the opportunities will continue to be there because of the workforce shortage that we are experiencing and will continue to experience. But definitely understand that it's a very real consideration. Keep moving? Yeah. K. Class size and staffing. You know that we have come in here at the beginning of the session talking about class size, the policy as potentially being a lever early on because of some of the difficulties with accounting for staffing in general. Some of the definitions are very not clear in terms of the data collection. And so we do think that that could potentially be a good policy lever, but would need to get very clear on what how we're defining staffing and, like, what it means to, have ideal staffing levels in different categories for the type of education system that we are hoping to achieve. Class size is pivotal in Vermont's education policy decisions and comes with also all the same rural considerations that we've been talking about. Vermont class sizes are already smaller than those outlined in research, and that research shows mixed results regarding the relationship between class size and student outcomes. So, in general, the research has been showing that it's, not necessarily the best bang for your buck around class sizes. And when they're looking at this research, they're talking typically about situations in which they're going from about thirty students down to twenty to seventeen to twenty. So it's not necessarily super relevant to the Vermont context. In Vermont, class sizes can fall significantly below the range of research, like I said. Very small class sizes can create challenges for instruction. They can force grade configurations, like multi age classroom for grades k through three that change yearly, creating an inconsistent curricular experience and making it difficult for teachers to implement, varied instructional practices like ability mix and ability alike groupings, cooperative learning in very small classes. These are the our instructional practices that are very well defined in research, but not often referenced in terms of class size research. Currently, Vermont's policy is silent on minimum class sizes and caseloads. I included the reference to the EQS that talks about minimums. I won't read it. And in addition, act one fifty three of twenty ten required that each supervisory union and member district board adopt minimum and optimal average class size policies. We viewed a represent representative sample, and by that, I mean geographically representative, of these current district policies, and minimums range from ten to fifteen for k through three, ten to eighteen for four through eight, and ten to twenty three for nine through twelve. Please note these are average class size policies, so it does allow for some flexibility if you have, for example, one small class for a particular subject and then not for another or related to different grade bands as well. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Do you query your folks as to whether everybody actually followed their class size policies as as required? [Chelsea Myers ]: It's not good practice for my position to call out superintendents, but maybe we'll [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Well, it's a it's a it's a school board machine. [Chelsea Myers ]: It's a [Chair Peter Conlon ]: school board policy that is supposed to be followed by. Yeah. Speaking as a former school board chair. It's not it is not a policy we refer back to as much as we should have. [Chelsea Myers ]: And I will not name names in this situation, but sometimes they're not updated frequently or, like you said, they're not adhered to when the time comes to vote on budgets at the school board level. Bill, anything to add there? [Witness Bill Kimball ]: Yeah. I I have a few things to add there. I was kinda chuckling in the background. It this year, my board chair and I, we determined we have a class size policy that doesn't have any numbers in it. It just says the superintendent and the school board shall determine the class size, optimal class sizes for Maple Run. And because I knew where we were budgetarily, I thought it was a good we did both decide this was a good thing for the board to struggle with and to look at. And so we talked about it. We gave all the class size data for year for probably the past three years in Maple Run to the board. And we have some class sizes that range from what I would call the low teens in that thirteen, fourteen area to up to over twenty in our pre k through eight classrooms. And in our high school, we even have greater range from ten to a double and doubly instructed or a team taught phys ed course that can be around fifty students. We averaged seventeen at the high school. We averaged fifteen or sixteen in our pre k through eighth grades across our three schools. It was very difficult for our board to make the decision. They want to be supportive of students and teachers, but they also feel pressure from parents and teachers to keep class sizes small. And that was a difficult decision for them to wrestle with. We finally did and set our minimums at fifteen for pre k through three, eighteen for four through twelve, and just set that this past fall. I asked them to do that before we went into budgetary development, so that we had guidelines as administration of how they wanted us to construct it. Also, allowing for very small classes if needed for specialized instruction, whether that was tier two or tier three supports. I've seen this in other in very small schools, it's very difficult because when you talk about class size, boards rest they usually don't talk about class size during budgeting. They're talking about the number of teachers, but everyone knows it's talking about class size. And at that same time, they're wrestling with, do I have a teacher teach two, three, or four grade levels or have a very small class size? And what happens to that quality? I love that quote you had, Chelsea, about, you know, there's many multiple factors that go into student success. And so that quality of the teachers are real is a really important one, and we know that teachers, just for one grade level, need to know plus or minus two grade levels of instruction and curriculum for the grade level which they're teaching. So that means if you're a fourth grade teacher, you need to know from second grade to sixth grade. So if you start teaching multi grade and you have more than two grades in a classroom, it really starts to expand the repertoire of what the teacher needs to have needs to know and that's a huge load to put on our on our teachers. I will tell you that one of the things that we have found across our buildings in our k three, we had ranges from thirteen to twenty five in grade levels. We implemented a new literacy program three years ago. In the first year of implementing that, the teachers that implemented it to Fidelity will out pour outperformed their colleagues, and they had class sizes in the twenty versus the low to mid teens. So it wasn't necessarily about the class size. It was about the quality of instruction that was happening in the classroom. [Speaker 3 ]: Have there been any significant time studies that have been carried out among faculty to compare the amount of time they're putting into multi age classroom multigreed classrooms versus single grade grade classrooms or different class sizes when they reach those levels of success? [Chelsea Myers ]: Can I get back to you? Sure. I don't know any off the top of my head, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Alright. Bill, do you know? [Witness Bill Kimball ]: I I don't know of any either. I know that we've looked a lot at either two grade bands or one grade band or do you you know, one of the things we've I the only I can comment is to towards looping, but that means being consistently with a group of children for two years, not about the grade ranges in that. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Mhmm. [Witness Bill Kimball ]: And the looping shows that that's especially in the second year of a two year loop that that provides more time on instruction because you have that relationship with that group of kids. [Chelsea Myers ]: We wanna emphasize that the focus on class size in this section should not imply that policy should disproportionately impact one category of employee over another. We do think staff to state student ratio should be looked at, and we do feel like, central office and administration should be looked at through the process of the district sides because oftentimes, that's a function of whatever you determine from policy around district side. So do not want it to seem like we only think that class size is the important mechanism and that we're disproportionately trying to impact one employee over another. That's not the case. Again, district we we are hoping that the conversation around administration is focused on the district, level and or the district policy decisions, and that we are, conscientious of making sure that we're getting very clear on definitions of what staffing, means in the state of Vermont so that we can get good data and reporting on that. Again, I gave the example last time of sometimes contractors, for example, are counted differently in one district compared to the other. And so just getting really clear and consistent about that can help with policy decisions in the second half of the biennium around staff to student ratios. We are significantly lower ratio than other New England counterparts. We do understand that. And then just one last thing, because you all will inevitably be thinking about, foundation formula. So in PICUS the PICUS report, they aim to address specific staffing rules in relation to setting an adequate amount of funding. It does not specifically look at what would be required for Vermont to implement its vision for education. For example, the description of a Vermont education currently defined in the revised EQS, education quality standards. What's more, it does not always align with initiatives already set in law. For example, it does not model multi tiered systems of support effectively in the way that Vermont, has asked school districts to implement, which is good practice. Thus, while the PICUS report can serve as a starting point for policy discussions, there are distinct adjustments that need to be made to align with current values supported in policy and a future vision for public education in Vermont. Policymakers should be cautious of adopting and implementing a foundation formula with an adequacy allotment based on staffing rules that don't align with the current reality or future vision for what you all hope to be in Vermont public education school system. So the policy recommendations related to class size, we actually got in a room with about forty of the fifty six superintendents and said, hash it out. What do you think that looks like? Because, again, the research isn't really applicable to Vermont. It we are talking about, ranges of class sizes that are, focused on much bigger scale in other community in in basic research. And so when they got together, they, had five groups, and then I just tried to kind of combine and average what they came up with. But there was generally some common themes. They feel that kindergarten should stay relatively small at about twelve, and then one to five around fifteen, six to twelve around eighteen. Again, those are minimums, not maximums, and some exceptions may need to be made for things like CTE courses. We believe that the delivery mechanism are already there. You can include it in the EQS and in the school board policy. And, additionally, as I've mentioned, requiring the AOE to clearly define staffing reporting so that you all can think about that and talk about that in the next biennium. That was a lot. Thank you for giving us time. We feel that careful considerations must be made to balance both gains and efficiency and quality. The findings in this brief indicate that reforms that far exceed research backed recommendations for scale, particularly district scale, are ill advised in categories for both efficiency and quality until we fully understand their consequences. Comprehensive reform will marry thoughtful sequencing of change to governance, education delivery, and funding. Please do not change the funding mechanism without changing some of the other delivery mechanisms because doing the same with less is really not an option for our kids in Vermont. So thank you for being bold and talking about this, and we look forward to further conversations. [Chair Peter Conlon ]: Thank you. This is this is really a lot of food for thought and clearly a lot of work going into it. I really appreciate that. Alright. Yeah. Right. I'm sorry. Bill, anything else that you wanted to say? [Witness Bill Kimball ]: No. I just thank thank the education committee for inviting me to attend with Chelsea, and I I [Chair Peter Conlon ]: think that's it. Great. Thank you. And, let's take five minutes while we reset the
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