Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Welcome to House Education on Friday, February 13. We're joined this afternoon by getting a little more feedback on Act 73. And we've got folks from EdWatch Vermont first, and then later we'll hear from folks from the Vermont Rural School Trinity Alliance. To kick things off, the floor is yours. Introduce yourselves and we look forward to your testimony.

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: Great. Well, thank you for allowing me to be here. It's always fun to come and do this.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Hope so.

[Alison Despathy (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: No, it is

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: fun. But anyway, so first off, who am I? My name is Retta Dunlap and along with Alison, Alison Despathy here, we are co directors of EdWatch Vermont. It's been a nonprofit in Vermont for many years, but it's been an active of late. So we're stepping into Retrieve It to be a voice for parents and children seeking education freedom at the legislature. You can

[Alison Despathy (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: learn more at the website. They're going along. What is it for real? My

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: understanding is there's been a few large helicopters flying around doing low level land mapping.

[Alison Despathy (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: The LiDAR stuff. In my apartment

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: this morning, I heard one. It's like, people. Don't know the history is.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It'd be wrong for anyone who's watching. Okay.

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: We're stepping in to revive EdWatch to be a voice for parents and children seeking education freedom at the legislature. And you can learn more about it at edwatchbt.org. It's a site that's still being updated. So over the past thirty years, I have testified on pre K consolidation, flexible pathways, dual enrollment, college vouchers for high school students. I've served on legislative study committees, most recently appointed by the governor in 2022 on the after school study committee. I also served in the statewide consolidation study committee and chaired my local district's consolidation process, which now operates as one district with one high school, one early education center, and family choice among four elementary schools. So next, why am I here? To be clear, although I have worked as a homeschool advocate in this building, I'm not here today in that capacity for one very simple reason. Over the past thirty years, I have spoken with families who do not want to homeschool, but who feel something is wrong with education and do not know what it is. They feel like they have no voice. Take a mom I know with a two year old son. The local elementary school is labeled above proficient, yet she sees teenagers in the community who cannot fill out a check, read cursive, or make change. She has to work. She does not want to homeschool, yet she feels she may have to teach him the basics herself when he goes to the public school, and she's not alone in that sentiment. So what's the problem? Chronic absenteeism in Vermont is about thirty percent, and it has increased since COVID. I know you all have talked about that already, but why? There's a 17 year old in this state I won't share his details who checks in for attendance every morning and then leaves school. He returns only for the classes he needs to graduate and then leaves again. Strengthening truancy reporting requirements in the law does not begin to address why this student and others who are also not fluent do not want to be in these schools. Families matter, but schools are not bystanders. If a child spends seven hours a day, year after year, in school and still cannot read proficiency, the system is accountable. We cannot keep pointing to only poverty, parents, and special needs as the problem. When a method fails year after year, it must change. There's only one mechanism that ensures it does. Put the student at the center, let funding follow the child, and give parents power to choose. When families control the decision, the system finally answers to the child. Vermont already has the students, the teachers, and the school buildings, both public and independent, to build a truly student centered education system. We just need to organize it for success. None of this will save money or improve outcomes unless parents choose which school their children attend. None of this will work unless there is a real variety among schools in the state, which means independent schools removed from tuitioning must be reinstated, including specialized schools such as ski academies that were previously eligible. Here's what a student centered education system should look like, placing responsibility in the right places. I will do so at a high level description in five parts, funding, the state, schools, parents, and students. Education funding must be simple and transparent and distributed through a single statewide structure. The state sets a per student amount for general education with additional allocations for special education and transportation as needed. Funding follows the student to the school chosen. Schools, public or independent, operate within that amount. This shifts the system from funding institutions to funding students. The state's role is governance, not operation of schools. The State Board of Education oversees the structure, financing, and approval of public and independent schools. The Agency of Education administers it. The state sets standards and accountability but does not dictate pedagogy. To ensure genuine variety and meaningful choice, the current regulatory eligibility criteria to receive state funding must be revived. As written, those criteria exclude previously approved independent schools and reduces options for students. Eligibility should reflect educational quality and family demand, not arbitrary thresholds. For schools, both public and independent, govern themselves, hire staff, design curriculum, determine methods, and pedagogy within the per student allocation. They are accountable for reading, writing, and a math proficiency, financial transparency, and family satisfaction. Small schools should not be closed simply to achieve administrative consolidation or projected cost savings. A student centered system would allow them to thrive while respecting Vermont's geography and communities. Parents choose the school that best fits their child and family. They may move their child if that school fails to meet their needs. They are responsible for ensuring attendance, ready to learn, and overall well-being. Choice gives parents leverage. Leverage ensures the system answers to the child. Finally, the students are entitled to a safe educational environment that meets their individual needs and supports their academic development. The system exists to serve students, not the other way around. So in closing, I'd like to end with this. Mississippi is now outperforming Vermont in both math and reading. When you compare similar student populations, such as Mississippi's non Hispanic students with Vermont's non Hispanic students, Vermont's reading and math scores fall even further. And Mississippi is doing this while spending roughly half of what Vermont spends per child. We are one of the highest spending states in the nation on education. They are near the bottom. They are gaining ground in reading and writing. We are not. At some point, we have to ask whether the issue is consolidation or whether the structure of the system itself is the problem and must change. So three points, because we're here to talk about act 73, is the independent schools that were removed need to be put back. All the children in the state of Vermont should have choice, not just some, And the funding needs to follow the student. It needs to support the student directly. And then institutions have to work.

[Alison Despathy (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: Allison, thank you, Donna. So I just want to acknowledge, as you all know, and Allison S. Pathy, Danville resident and Ed Watch co director. I want to acknowledge, I think, any of us who are in here and paying attention recognize that you have the toughest committee work for the session and probably last year as well. And you've got a lot of competing interests and priorities coming into play that I know you're attempting to juggle. So I definitely have compassion and empathy for you on that. I just want to tell a few stories. I have three children and I homeschooled them all through eighth grade. My oldest son went to Danville School. We do not have choice in Danville. We're one of the few towns It might even be the only town. No, we're one of the few towns in the Northeast Kingdom who does not have choice. Abbott's not technically in the Northeast Kingdom. They're next to us. They don't have choice. But Kirby and Sutton and Burke and Barnett and Peacham, the majority of them have at least high school choice. Kirby, there's more, I didn't think I mentioned them, there's a lot of them. And so Danville is this sort of little unique case study place. And there's a lot of people who struggle and who will not move there for this reason and who also move out for this reason. So my first son went to Danville High School, cranked it out in three years, no problem. He's pretty private guy. He didn't need to engage and socialize too much with people. He just did his thing. My second son as a junior went to St. Jay Academy, not because we have money, but because we, my husband and I got extra jobs. And he, my son, worked at a farm and put in $7 to pay because he's a crazy soccer player. And now he's in North Carolina doing college and playing soccer. So junior and senior year for him at the academy, we did not have choice, but we made it happen. I still owe them $8. They hear this. I am working on it. They've been very gracious. We have a plan in place. My daughter, Molly, is 14. She is now a freshman at Danville. She's having a horrible experience. She's a very strong, good person. She's hanging in there. I'd pull her in homeschool, but she wants to go through. So again, I will get another job. I actually did just get another job and my husband will work on a weekend day and probably try to do more because that's the best thing for her. And she needs to go to somewhere other than Danville. Last year, the eighth grade class that obviously are now freshmen, in which my daughter entered this class, almost half, 13 of thirty eighth graders left that school. I've been in touch with many of the parents. I know many of them. Bullying, educational opportunity, needing to have a new friend group, open up opportunity. They felt very locked and trapped. And those parents had the resources. They had the money be able to make that happen or the ability to be able to move to make that happen. So two years ago, I guess it would be 2023, the same thing happened. Almost half of the eighth grade class migrated out and either moved or they went to LI or St. Jay Academy because here we have this opportunity. And Bob Frenier, I just want to plug in. He might be worth having come in. He has gone through all of the comprehensive achievement testing from the AOE and has listed out from a data standpoint, if you guys are data people, which I'm sure at this point we really are, he has looked at all of the schools who are proficient, who are not proficient, and who are hugely not proficient to be able to sort of look in locations of, say for Cabot, Peacham, Danville, Danville and Cabot are below proficient, Peacham is proficient. So being able to look at that aspect from a data standpoint. So just to mention him, he's done a lot of work on that. And so basically, what we end up seeing is if people have, and this will always be the case, if people have money and resources, they're going to put their kid where they want to put their kid and where they think their kid is going to thrive best. So really, the question is, can we open that up? How can we figure out, as Reda was saying, a system where we can open it up, where all the kids have that opportunity. And granted, we need to have guardrails in place and we don't wanna see everything fall apart. We wanna make sure that there's continuity and the kids are okay, and we have a good, safe structure from the schools that kids can choose from. But on last Friday, I was listening to one of your experts from Florida, Mr. Baker, who came in and he said to you guys, You are attempting to solve a problem that nobody else has solved. That's specifically what he said, not exactly Pope, but that was the message. The thing that I just want to put out there is, can we move in a path that focuses on the student? Mean, you guys are hearing often from Vermont NEA and the stakeholders and public schools and all of the experts of this study and this data, etcetera. But can we bring it back to the parents and the kids to be able to say, Here are some options. Where do you think you'll thrive best? What do you think is gonna work? What's gonna work best for you? You're not having good experience here, why? Let's try to fix it. We can't fix it, let's go to this other place. There's gotta be a path for this. These are formative years. Every single one of us knows what it's like to go through grade school and high school and how that affects us. So that then leads me to this other piece of, in December, there was a family. The two parents teach at the St. Johnsbury Academy and they know what that has to offer. Their daughter is currently going to Danville. She's in eighth grade, and they wanted her to have the opportunity to go to St. Jay Academy. So they put together a petition. And you probably heard about this in the news to an extent. They put together a petition, they got the right amount of people, we want to close the high school. As you can imagine, it was chaos. Everybody loves their school, you guys know that. People are going to fight for their school, the towns are going to fight for their school. And Danville is a good school for a lot of kids, but not for everybody. And so we heard stories about bullying. We heard stories, and I just have to read these quotes for you guys. They specifically did a petition to the students about I'm sorry, a survey to the students about this petition. Who's they? I'm so sorry, the Danville School. Thank you very much. Yes. The Danville School did a petition Sorry, let me get straight. The Danville School did a survey about the petition, and this is what they heard from students. Danville holds a special place in my heart, but I would do much better at another school. Close the school because I want to go to the academy, but my family can't afford to move or pay tuition. Sorry, I go through this with my kids. The people who live in Danville and want to go to the academy and cannot afford it need a choice at least. I have nothing against Danville School, but I feel like I would have a better opportunity at St. Jay or LI. The school has slowly but surely affected my mental health, and honestly, I just want to start fresh. I would feel relieved, and these are all quotes, I would feel relieved if the school closed so my mom wouldn't have to work a third job to help pay for the academy. Danville holds a special place in my heart, but I definitely could benefit from the closing mentally and would do much better at another school coming from someone who can't afford to pay or move or pay tuition. Last one, this is a small school and toxic environment. Small schools are great, but this is crazy. I think in order to be exposed to the real world and different cultures, step out of your comfort zone and into a bigger school. So I just wanna say that I think it is very important as you guys move along, because I know you're dealing with funding and governance and all of these big questions is like, what is best for the student and the families? And how do you try to achieve this real equity? If we're looking for what is equal, who makes that decision? Is it you guys? Is it school boards? Is it the NEA? Who's making that decision? Shouldn't it be parents and children talking about that? And one last thing to plug in here is with the homeschool community, because I homeschooled all my kids through eighth grade, it was always really shocking to see the difference with the families who lived in towns that had choice. Like, oh my gosh, okay, you're getting ready to go to high school. We're not gonna homeschool anymore. We live in a town with choice. Where do you wanna go? Let's go visit. Let's go visit this school, Danville. Let's go to the St. Jay. Let's go to LI. Let's just go see what are your opportunities? What resonates best with you? And then the kids who didn't have that are like, okay, well, guess I'm excited to go there or no, I don't wanna go there. Or I go there for a year and it's not a good experience. So I just wanna sort of make sure that we do have some eyes on the student experience and the parent experience in this as you're trying to sort out all of those other pieces. Because I think locking people into something, and I think we all know this, locking people into something doesn't make us feel good. We need choices and we need to respect that kids learn differently, whether it's small schools or big schools or whatever it might be. So just want to put that out there for now.

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: I'd just like to emphasize here that the children that we are locking in are the ones who can afford to do it. And there's two terms here. There's fair and equal. It's not fair. That's equity. That's not providing them with equity of opportunities, fair opportunities. My years of experience with homeschooling is that families who can't afford to do this, I can't tell you, I'm a man, I had to cry at my kitchen table. I homeschool and I can't send my kid to a private school and I have to leave them where they are. And the wealthy can just up and pay for it. So this plan here, I think, would work within Vermont's current structure using all the same schools. I'm not talking about closing any schools. Will schools eventually close? Sure. They refuse to change? They might have to. But what we're doing and what I've seen for the past thirty years, acts forty six and sixty and now 73 and all the changes and stuff, it's only gotten more expensive and worse. So anyway, questions, counselor.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you both for taking the time this afternoon. We got a few minutes before we have our next round of testimony. Yes, Rob. I'm not sure that I heard this right. Is Mississippi a University choice?

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: I don't know if Mississippi has choice at all. It's just their NAEP scores. Okay. Yeah. And

[Alison Despathy (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: I'm sorry, go ahead. So based on what you're proposing, what happens when St. Johnsbury is, if anybody has the choice, then if St. Johnsbury is full, who gets to go there? I think that's gonna come back to what I was exactly just gonna say is that moratorium is holding any level of creativity or innovation for school back. And so I think that that to me is really what needs to be revisited in the sense of, if you have, and obviously you guys create the policy and AOD executes, right? I mean, that's the bottom line. So if you set up a situation where, boom, these are the criteria that you need to walk through so you can become an approved independent school, if you've got a small school of 20 kids and they're, say, given a foundation formula or a base grant, and they can make that happen and they can jump through their hoops, why shouldn't they have the opportunity if they're doing good for kids? And I think if we start to, again, lock into the system and there's issues with that and people can't come in like us humans do, we try to make things better, we try to get creative, we solve problems. And if we're locking that out. And the other last thing I'd say, if you don't mind is, there is a lot of talk about DEI, diversity, equity, inclusivity. And so I think then when you start to say, sorry, religious schools, you were in for what, a year or two, And now, sorry, you may have been doing a great job, but you can't get any money now. I think that that has

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: to also be thought about. When we walk through this process in the OSS, over hard bit about, so what if parents all choose this school, it's full? Choice or parental choice, school choice, whatever you want to call this, it can't be absolute. I can't pick this school and they have to take me because schools have capacity. If capacity is full, then the parents would have to have a second choice. I know some states in this country will do a lottery. And another thing that we talked about with these elementary schools, capacity was one. The other thing is that parents can't just decide on September 10. They need to come in and they need to say, my enrollment month is May to enroll my kids in a school. That's my choice because schools have to be able to budget and prepare for the students. So they need time to do that. Maybe it's in March that they have to be choosing the school and enrolling and things like that. So you have to take into consideration capacity and timing for budgets in schools to do what they need to do to operate. And maybe if

[Alison Despathy (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: you don't mind, if we did have until 01:30, there were just two things I'm just looking at. And you guys are probably more well aware of this than I. But I think my understanding is that is in Rutland, there's seven high schools. In Orleans, they've lost half of their students, but they're still operating all the schools. Berry Unified lost 200 or no, I'm sorry. It was they've gone down from, like, 1,500 or so ten years ago, and I think they're at 600 or 700 right now. So, I mean, you guys are aware of this stuff, but there's a part of me that feels like, could you guys have a facilitator? Someone who goes, I don't want to build bureaucracy, but someone who specifically goes, I'm hired for a year or two to go help these areas have these conversations. Orleans, let's talk about this. Rutland, let's talk about this. Barry, what's going on? Obviously, the CTE, back to, I'm so sorry, I think, I don't know your name, representative. Brady. Brady, yes, okay, sorry. Back to your question. The CTE, Central Vermont CT had to reject about 200 plus students because of lack of capacity. And then obviously they wanted to build, that failed. Now it looks like they're getting grants coming in so they could expand capacity. And so that's the other concept that comes up is, could you do some anchor schools? Could the CTEs be anchor schools? They're always popular, people like them, they seem like they're doing well, they seem like there's high level proficiency. Could they be a place that could take in kids? It looks like maybe there were a few holes around the state that might need to be filled in. But just ideas like that, where you could try to make this happen in a way that keeps stability for students and the school system at the state.

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: Great, thank you. I'm sorry, one question here. Yeah, sorry.

[Alison Despathy (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: I wanna say something being respectful of the lived experience that you're bringing to the table today, but just for folks out in the world who might be listening, I can't agree that we're failing Vermont students by locking them into a public school system. Just think I didn't say so. We didn't say failing, but if we do lock in a system, maybe this one example, if there is one more minute. Okay, there is another minute, if that's okay. A woman in Cabot reached out to me a few years ago and her daughter was going to the Cabot School and she was being bullied and talked about chronic absenteeism. She was not going to school. She had anorexia. She was struggling very hard. She tried to work and she shared all of the emails from the school board and the superintendent and the principal, and she had no support, zero support. And I just wanna bring this up in the sense of there's gonna be these situations. Some kids like Danville, they thrive. Other kids, they don't. But when it all becomes about, I need to keep the money here, I cannot lose a student, And it's not about the student. Fortunately, she ended up getting her child to go to People's Academy from there. But I think we just have to recognize that it's how do we create that space that actually works for students to go somewhere else when they are not having good experience like that. Not about failure.

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: It's not about locking kids into failing schools. It's just locking kids into schools that might be not fit for them. The school may be fine, but because of other reasons With they

[Alison Despathy (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: respect to some very hard individual circumstances that exist out there, I just wanted to be really clear on the record that I see the job of this committee as strengthening public education across the entire state of Vermont. Appreciate people have different perspectives about how to do that, but I just think you have to be careful about how we're talking about a system that is critically important to our community. 100%.

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: Let me add one more comment. The way I view the term public education is taxpayer funding schools, which include public schools and independent schools. Because the term public education is often used as a synonym for the public schools. And really, I don't think it should be because you've got taxpayers paying money even to independent schools. So that's public education, which the public schools are part of. And that's how I tend to use the terms.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay, thank you both very much for your time.

[Alison Despathy (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: Thank you for the time.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And for the short notice that you came in us today.

[Alison Despathy (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: We appreciate it. Thank you.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Changing directions here a little bit. We have just got my agenda back up here.

[Retta Dunlap (Co-Director, EdWatch Vermont)]: Is there a time to please arrest or listening testimony?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes, do people need two minutes?