Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Committee. We it is February 25. We are here today with some very important people in our in our lives. School employees are gonna give us some, hopefully, some words of wisdom, some advice, and some some good updates from what's going on in their world. We do have a couple of committee members that are gonna be coming in a little bit later, so they will be here. But we have a lot of people that wanna speak, and we only have about an hour. So when you do come up to speak, I've got a list here. When you do come up to speak, just be mindful. You have people behind you waiting to speak as

[Matt Gile]: well, and we want to try to

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: get to everybody. Without hesitation, I think the first person on my list is Peter Davenport. Peter, if you could have a seat right there. Yeah. Absolutely. And please introduce yourself. Tell us where you are employed, and the floor is yours.

[Vicki Johnson]: Yeah.

[Peter Davenport]: My name is Peter Davenport from Fairfax, and I'm a behavior interventionist at Saint Albans City School. I came to this job by accident, but I've since found it to be my calling in life. I've had many jobs before, but I've never felt I've had more of an impact on people and our society than with the work I do in schools. For those of you who don't know what a BI is or does, I primarily support students with extreme and or dangerous behaviors in a one to one capacity to ensure that they and their peers are able to access their education as best as possible. Many children need support in in order to be successful at school and eventually be independent adults. Through my work daily, I support students exhibiting extremely challenging or dangerous behavior and make sure they and their peers are able to learn and grow as individuals. I could give literally hundreds of examples of situations I've been in that would shock most people, I've and only been in this field for four years. If we don't provide the care these kids need when we can, we set them up for failure in life with catastrophic knock on effects to our largest society. Despite the intense situations I find myself in daily and barely making enough money to live, I love my job. The growth I'm able to see in students keeps me coming back to do this important work every day. In many cases, I've had students with severe mental distress and sometimes violent behaviors improve so significantly under my care and the care of my coworkers that they are able to participate at school on par with their peers and maintain emotional regulations so well that they regularly do not need support throughout their day. These are the miracles that everyone who works in schools performs for our students and our society. Nothing makes me happier than seeing my work help students be happy, help independent people. To be clear, students should not have to struggle so much just to get an education, and educators should not have to do so much for so little to provide an education to Vermont's youth, our only constitutionally mandated public rights. Much of the root causes of our students' distress comes from socioeconomic factors outside their family's control and certainly out of their control as children growing up in a broken system. Schools do much more than just teach academics. We teach emotional regulation. We provide breakfast and lunch to food insecure children, post after school programs, and our stop gap for essential social and mental health services children need to be healthy. This is a lot for a fragile education system to take on. As a state, we need to make sure we're doing more than just the bare minimum to keep these children on a satisfactory path. We need to make sure we're giving them everything they need to be successful. For me, that means a few things. One, we need to make sure all school staff are paid fairly for their work they do for future generations of Vermonters. Two, we need to establish a universal health care system that provides adequate physical and mental health coverage to people of all ages so that children and adults do not have to struggle so much just to have a fair shot at life. And three, affordable housing must be a right of all Vermonters so we no longer have homeless students who are more comfortable at school than outside of school hours. I am beyond proud of the work done in Vermont's schools, and I look forward to making as much of a difference as I can for our kids for the rest of my career. I love what myself and my colleagues do for Vermont's children. I just wish it wasn't so hard. Thank you for your time and your continued collaboration to make Vermont's public education system the best it can possibly be.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Next on the list is Helen Sullivan.

[Helen Sullivan]: Hello, thank you for your time this afternoon. I'm Helen Sullivan. I teach social studies at Montpelier High School. This is my eighteenth year teaching. I usually teach more ninth graders than anything else, and they're a lot of fun. But the highlight of my year every year is my junior senior elective class on current events, media studies and contemporary issues. I think every teacher loves electives. They're often our passion projects. The students who enroll in them share those interests. For me, means a group of students who care deeply about what's happening in the world and show up ready to talk and just as importantly, to listen. This past fall, that meant conversations about vaccine recommendations, the civil war in Sudan, the shootings of Charlie Kirk and Renee Nicole Goode, even about education reform in Vermont on one great day, conservation and the birth of a baby black rhino in Kenya. And that's just what we do in the first fifteen to twenty minutes of class. The rest of our time is structured around in-depth projects focused on skills of research, collaboration and effective communication. This fall students presented on the news media in China, the history of Fox News and photojournalism in Palestine. They wrote policy papers on gun control. We debated whether artificial intelligence is a threat to humanity, and then invited our district's curriculum director to join us for a conversation about AI in education. We examined US Venezuela relations through a model United Nations conference and ended the semester with final projects ranging from adult illiteracy to modern day slavery to Slovakian politics. It was such a good semester. And even when the news was terrible, which it often was, I looked forward to discussing it with my amazing students, all seven of them. Now, MHS isn't big, but it's also not tiny. And I know there are a lot of great offerings competing for the attention of my juniors and seniors. Community based learning, other elective classes, personalized learning, a job, maybe just an extra free block. But this year, 16 of our seniors are attending early college. And I worry about what happens to these students and the schools they leave behind when they decide to skip senior year. So I'm asking you to repeal or at least make a plan to seriously reevaluate the early college program. There is enough pressure on our kids to grow up fast already. They miss out on their senior year in high school, and the school community misses out on their leadership. We miss them in our advisories, our clubs, our fall harvest celebration talent show, and of course, our class. Some students choose early college because they feel like there aren't enough things they still want to do in high school. And this can easily become a vicious cycle. As enrollment shrinks in upper level classes, they can become less attractive. They can even be canceled. And so more students consider leaving early. Some students choose early college as a financial decision, and on an individual basis, that is hard to argue with. But students who take this path sometimes need to pay things like activities fees, and they must provide their own reliable transportation. The students benefiting financially from this program are often not those who need it the most. Two years ago, twelve point five percent of our early college students qualified for free and reduced lunch compared to 31.8% of the student body as a whole. The year before that, it was zero. By all means, let's work on making college more affordable, but let's make it more affordable for college students. So take a look at who Early College is serving and how it's serving them. In a time when we're concerned with declining enrollment, let's keep our kids in school. In a time of difficult financial decisions, let's keep money for pre K to 12 education in our pre K to 12 schools. And as we contemplate statewide graduation requirements, let's say you're not done with high school until you're done with high school. So I would like you to support H H seven seventy nine sponsored by my rep from East Montpelier, Ella Chapin, that would repeal early college, expand dual enrollment options, and create a group to study college level offerings for high school students in other ways. Thank you very much.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Vicki Johnson.

[Vicki Johnson]: Anyway, my name is Vicky Johnson. I teach math and science at Randolph Union High School. A month ago, I was, covering a group of seventh graders and who decided to build an obstacle course, and I thought that would be really fun, but I'm I'm not 12 anymore. And, bless the middle school PE teachers, you know who you are. And unless you've ever wrangled 30 13 year olds playing dodge ball, you have no idea how long an hour it can be. So I went to urgent care to take care of the knee, and I was reminded of last time I went to the doctor for a checkup, and the nurse came in and she asked whether it was okay to have a student present. And, I said, sure. No problem. You know, we all have to learn sometime. Right? And she she kinda paused and said, actually, it's your student. And, and, of course, I thought, oh god, who is it? And, one of my former students came in, equally embarrassed to be examining his high school chemistry teacher. But the appointment went fine, and we got up caught up and all is well, and the student is going on to become you know, continuing his path to become a a you know, a doctor. But, I often remind myself of that moment when I'm teaching. I tell my students that they need to understand the difference between a milliliter and a deciliter because when I have a heart attack in fifteen years, they're the ones who are going to have to save me. They're the ones who are going to shock me back to life and figure out how to get my heart working again. The student who pushed back a bit against the rules in high school is now the fire captain in our town. And I know that nothing is gonna stop her from coming in and saving saving my kid in a burning building. Right? I know that and they also have to know what chemicals are present in a fire. Right? I know that all of my students will be our future teachers and coaches and engineers and receptionists and parents and activists and community members and legislators. Right? A lot happens in our schools. I grew up in New Hampshire, basically in like a really similar area. But when I was in school, if you didn't have the money, you didn't get school lunch. Right? If you were unable if your parents were unable to fill out the huge packet of forms, there was no food for you. If you struggled in school, there was no support for you. Nearly thirty percent of my students in my graduating class did not graduate. Right? At Randolph Union High School, all students are able to eat a healthy breakfast and lunch, and the need is great. More students are living without heat, without running water, without adequate food. Many experience trauma and are receiving support throughout, throughout the school day that allow them to stay in school rather than drop out. You know, just, three days before break, I was talking with our fantastic school counselor. She's a wonderful person. She's experienced. She's kind and warm and fun, but she's a professional, and she's seen it all. She's seen students deal with murder and suicides and homelessness and abuse and neglect. You know, she's a professional. Recently, she was present at a DCF interview for one of our students. And throughout the interview, the counselor, she was crying, throughout this interview. I have never seen her cry before. She told me that the stories of abuse that this student had told were among the hardest that she has ever had to bear witness to. And yet the student comes to school every day. They have hard days sometimes, but they're bright and they're resilient. Right after that interview, this student came into my classroom, and jumped right into a physics lab. Right? The student is interested in aeronautics, wants to be a plane mechanic. And they're going to do it. They're going to excel. We're going to give her that student the support they need to get there. And the next time you fly out of Burlington Airport, you're going to arrive at your destination safely because of that student. Right? In addition to teaching math and science, we also teach community. We teach students to be together in community. On the last day before winter break, we had a winter carnival and we had a recognition assembly. And then students could choose to go sledding or ice skating or bowling or build a fire or cook food. We they walked throughout the town, play floor hockey, play board games. And that way our students could go home with a little joy and a little hometown pride. I know that you all have a difficult task ahead of you as you consider the education, the future of education in Vermont. There's a lot of need in this state, and you're pulled in a lot of directions. But please remember that budgets are expressions of our values. Right? When we set budget caps that are lower than the cost of inflation, services that support our students are cut. In Vermont, we believe in working hard, and we also believe in taking care of each other. I moved to Vermont for that reason. Right? I tell my students, please ask questions. Don't assume that what you're told is necessarily the full story. I ask them to do their homework, right, and take care of themselves and take care of each other. I know that being a legislator is hard, but I'm going to ask you to do the same. Thank you very much.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We have Janaan Jocelyn.

[Janaan Jocelyn]: Thank you for your time. My name is Janaaneev Jocelyn. I've worked at Central Vermont Career Center for the past five years, and I've been in health care workforce development for fifteen years. The CTE Center is not a vocational school of the past. It's a rigorous credential rich, college connected and rooted in belonging and purpose. Our students earn industry recognized credentials. They gain transcripted college credit, and they work in real partnership with employers and community organizations. They're engaged because they feel seen, capable, and valued, and our demand reflects that. This year alone, we turned away more than a 100 qualified applicants. These students were ready and qualified. We simply did not have the space for them. It's a construction funding and capacity issue that's limiting opportunity for both the students and the Vermont workforce. We also face a serious recruitment and retention challenge. Across the state, CTE instructor pay is not competitive with industry wages. This makes it extremely difficult for us to recruit and retain highly qualified professionals, especially in health care and the trades. We are asking industry experts to take significant pay cuts to teach. If we want strong workforce programs, we must make these positions financially sustainable. I want to share two little stories. One is of a student who was told she would never succeed in health care. She came to us, completed a certified clinical medical assistant program, six college credits, and is now working at Central Vermont Medical Center as a nurse. Another I recently visited from the class of 2022 at the hospital where she works as a phlebotomist. She was in tears because she could not get her 20 birthday off from work due to staffing shortages. At 21 years old, she was already experiencing a health care workforce crisis. She was not just employed, she was part of a workforce pipeline and part of a solution to our health care staffing needs. CTE prepares students to tap directly into entry level roles and to succeed in competitive college programs. It's not a barrier to college. It's often the reason students persist. We have the students. We have the strong industry partners. We have the enrollment and the credentials and the college credits. What we don't have is the space and building capacity, and we don't have the competitive compensation structure needed to retain highly qualified teachers. Thank you for considering these things.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Next, we're gonna have Lilith Blackwell, and then after that is gonna be Carolyn Conlon. Lilith?

[Lola Blackwell]: Hi, I'm Lola Blackwell. I'm a Burlingtonian, and I'm a middle school ELA teacher down at U32, just in case I help. And I wanna share a little bit about what teaching looks like on the ground right now. In my classroom, English language arts is about much more than just reading and writing. It's about helping students find their voices, build confidence, and learn how to express their thinking during a time in their lives that can be challenging and uncertain. We all remember middle school. It's really tough. One moment that stands out to me is a student who came into my class this year convinced they hated ELA and weren't good at school. This is a common refrain I hear from seventh and eighth graders. They avoided reading, the student. They've avoided reading aloud and shut down when asked to write. Through consistent routines, small group support in groups of two or three, and what we like to call tier three interventions, and time building trust with this one kid in a small group, that student slowly began taking risks throughout this past semester. By the end of our first semester, this kid who was frequently hoodie over their head and just in their own funk of being 13, they raised their hand and volunteered to share their piece of writing. It wasn't perfect. I don't think any piece of writing for a 13 year old is gonna be perfect. But they were proud of what they had written. And they were able to take that confidence into the rest of their school day and the rest of their classes. That kind of growth happens because students have consistent access to teachers that know them well. That's why stability matters so much, especially in middle school. Right now, positions at our school and across the state, including my own position, are likely being reduced. When positions are cut, students don't just lose a class. They lose relationships and this continuity of support at a critical stage of development that is ensuring their success in the future. One way the legislature, the legislature could better support our students is by addressing education funding structures and opposing spending caps, including the impacts of Act 73. While cost containment is important, our current funding constraints often force schools to make reductions that directly affect students day to day. That safe person that they can go to, that will give them their first bite of food for the day. That person that they know that they can go to, to tell what happened last night between their mom and stepdad. We are at the front lines. Providing more flexible and predictable funding would allow schools like my own u thirty two, to retain experienced educators and sustain programs that are already helping students succeed. They're already doing so much. When funding supports stability, students benefit from consistency, connection, and the opportunity to thrive. This is the goal of all community schools and important and vital parts of our social service network. Thank you deeply for your time.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Carolyn Conlon, and then after Carolyn, we'll have Chrissy Park.

[Caroline Tomley]: My name is Caroline Tomley. I teach special ed in Chester, Vermont for Two Rivers Supervisory Union. And I've been a special educator in Vermont for sixteen years. And there are a lot of good things going on in education right now that I can share. The move towards creating multilayered systems of support within schools is grounded in meeting the needs of all students before they fail, which is a wonderful thing to aspire to. And when it works as it's intended, the results really speak for themselves. So I'm going to share a story about a student I had a couple years ago. And I think everybody in this room who's a teacher has had a student like this. They came from poverty. They had moved around a lot. They were dealing with a family member with substance abuse disorder, had a couple diagnosed disabilities. This was a new second grader that came in November year, had some really big behaviors. And with our collective expertise and the systems we had in place, we were able to pinpoint some real challenges that needed remediation. And it wasn't just behavior, it never is. And within a few months of really intensive support and teaching, the child just completely turned it around. And you could tell that he felt good about himself and capable, you know, maybe for the first time ever. And that's why we do this, to see a kid go from tearing up all their work and screaming at us to literally skipping down the hallways. You really can't beat that feeling that, like, we did this, like, our team helped this kid.

[Janaan Jocelyn]: And we wish we could

[Caroline Tomley]: help all our kids like this, but even reaching one just keeps you coming back.

[Joy Solomon]: So the number one thing you could

[Caroline Tomley]: do to support education is to encourage your fellow legislators to implement progressive tax reform and find a way to fund single payer health care. And I know that is daunting. I know you need waivers from the federal government you're not likely to get right now. But this is the way to start raising all of our communities to a greater and more humane standard of living. And if you raise all of those votes, there will be positive effects on education. We're already paying for it. 60% of tax dollars go towards health care in The United States. 31% of Vermonters are already on Medicaid or Medicare. We don't turn anyone away for being unable to pay. 15% of our education tax dollars currently go to health care premiums. And the cost of the most popular healthcare plan for teachers is expected to rise by another $30,000 in the next five years. And you multiply that times the 13,000 educators in the state, and that is close to $400,000,000 And we already pay 20% of that, and we cannot afford another dollars a And six some want to put more of that cost onto us, but that isn't going to solve the problem, because it goes beyond just the price of our health care premiums. 20% of all Vermonters report that they're struggling to pay medical bills. Since 2021, there has been a 60 increase in uninsured Vermonters ages zero to 17. Twenty five percent of Vermont students are chronically absent from school. Students needing additional early intervention or mental health support are not able to access those services outside of school. And all of these things cause real problems for schools. This cost of special education is rising, in large part due to the lack of support for students with emotional disabilities and autism. These populations generally need wraparound support that they're unable to get from outside agencies, and much of that can be attributed to our broken healthcare system and the expectation that schools meet this need. So I would urge you to please find a way to do this because the current system we have is unsustainable. Thank you.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Chrissy Park coming up. But after that, we have Madeline Dougherty.

[Chrissy Park]: I I had to, like, rewrite it because I printed the wrong version of this. So I apologize if I stumble. Good afternoon. My name is Chrissy Park, and I currently teach fourth grade at Burke Town School, which is in the Northeast Kingdom, way up north. And this is my tenth year in education. During that time, I've taught grades second through sixth grade. I taught sixth grade humanities, great year. And I stepped out of the classroom recently for two years and worked with students specifically on social emotional learning. During that time, I provided social groups for students. I helped create behavior plans that were really focused on getting kids back in the classroom and not having so many students outside the classroom, but providing an environment within the classroom that they were able to succeed and learn, as well as coaching and supporting teachers on what that can look like for students who have sensory needs, who need those supports in the classroom and behavioral needs. Last year, as with everything in education, I returned to the classroom middle of the year to support a third grade cohort who is significantly struggling with behavior. I apologize. I'm still getting over being sick, so if I'm raspy. That year, last year, that class had over two eighty behavior referrals. This year, as fourth graders, they have a little over 50. I wish I could stand here and say that I have implemented a groundbreaking strategy or have my years of experience alone turned things around in this classroom. But I can't. What changed that classroom from chaos to high quality learning was passion. Passion from me because I was back in the classroom doing what I love, teaching curriculum, watching the light bulb moments and seeing students grow. And passion from the students because they began to see themselves as learners. They started to understand that reading, writing and problem solving opens doors. When students feel capable and valued, behavior changes, engagement changes and outcomes change. We talk a lot about teacher burnout, and burnout is real. But I'd like to talk about teacher passion. Teaching children is both a science and an art. It requires an understanding of the science of how the brain develops and grows and learns. It requires applying that science through the careful art of instruction, relationships and responsiveness. It requires teachers to deeply believe that the work we do every day matters. I get to work alongside passionate educators every day. My colleagues show up for students in ways that go far beyond a job description. And the learning gains we see reflect that commitment. Too often, the narrative around education focuses on burnout, declining test scores and behavioral challenges. What if we flipped that narrative? What if we focused on passion, growth and teaching students how to solve real problems that they're going to face in this ever changing real world? Many of you sitting up here have stepped into the schools in the past few years and have seen that passion firsthand within students. If you haven't, I invite you to visit. When you see it, I believe the conversations that happen behind closed doors will shift. They will center on how to support student teachers and not diminish them based on salary rhetoric. They will center on what is best for students when discussing consolidation and district maps, especially for children who may lose connection to their hometown schools. We do have real challenges in how we fund education in Vermont, and we need real solutions. But as you consider the future of Vermont education, I ask that you remember this. The rhetoric we put into the world matters. It can either fuel passion or extinguish it. I encourage you to lean on the recommendations of the redistricting task force, educators and community members who had invested time, research and care into what will best serve both students and teachers, Forcing children who are already in buildings that are falling apart into another building that's also falling apart is not what is best for our students. Having class sizes that are way over what a classroom can hold and what a teacher can teach is not what is best for our students. It is not what will provide the success and passion that I was able to see with the 19 students in the fourth grade cohort that I teach this year. Please protect the passion that is alive in our schools. Thank you.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: For Madeline, we have Wendy MacIntyre.

[Madeleine Dougherty]: Hi. So as you said, I'm Madeleine Dougherty. I'm a ninth grade English teacher at Randolph Union High School. So first of all, I want to thank you for just taking the time to listen to all of us as experts on how policy decisions impact our students. Before I brag about all the great things happening in my school, I do want to share a little bit of my story because I think it represents the reality for a lot of people in this state. I am a proud graduate of Vermont Public Schools, CVU class of o two, Linden State College class of o six. And after graduating, I worked as a paraeducator at Essex Middle School until 2011. The only reason I left that job and, ultimately at the state is because my husband and I had to face facts. Young working people cannot afford to live in Vermont. We moved to Tennessee. We bought a three bedroom house for a $125,000, and we found high high quality childcare for our daughter for just $200 per week. Our life was affordable for the first time ever. Ultimately, though, it was really hard to be away from our family, and it was hard to be away from Vermont values, like reproductive freedom. So we moved back in 2019, and at first, it felt like very little had changed here except that everything was so much more expensive. I did some math. The $15 an hour I was paid in 2011 would be $32 an hour today had it kept pace with inflation, but that position pays $21 per hour. A house like the one we owned in Tennessee costs over $500,000 in Chittenden County. The cost of a VHI gold plan for a single adult has nearly tripled since 2017. My teaching salary is good. I'm not here to complain, but it is because I have ten years of experience teaching in a classroom, and that is only possible because I moved away. Living in a cheaper state was the only way that I could get my foot on the economic opportunity ladder. And I'm telling you this because I believe that Vermont's education costs and tax issues are due very much in part to the fact that young professionals are driven away from this state by low salaries, high living costs, and no access to child care. Until there is ample housing, affordable health insurance, and wages that keep pace with the cost of living, we're not going to resolve the challenges that Act 73 is attempting to address. But even so, I do not regret for one second coming back home to Vermont. A big reason why we returned was the school system. Our daughter was about to start kindergarten. And in Tennessee, private interests have manufactured scarcity in the public education system. Kindergarten families have to compete for limited spots in the best, best charter schools, while traditional public schools are losing out on funds. Here in Vermont, we have community schools that welcome our kids, and this is why keeping public tax money in public schools really matters. We need the diverse and rich learning opportunities that our schools offer that go way beyond what a standardized test measures. So Randolph High School, we offer a really cool variety of educational experiences. I'm actually gonna focus on a class that I don't personally teach, which is the racial and economic justice project based learning electives. Students in those classes are passionate about social justice and service to their community. Just this year, they teamed up with the culinary arts program at the Career Center to bring a free food truck and winter clothing giveaway to the food bank. They educated the school community about migrant justice's milk with dignity program and the atrocities happening in Minneapolis. They inspired my ninth graders to take notice, and they participated in actions like a walk in before school started to educate people about what's happening with ICE. They care so deeply for their communities and for their fellow human beings across the country, and it is because of my colleagues at Randolph High School that they have the guidance and material support to turn those feelings into meaningful action. At u thirty two, where I worked from 2019 to '25, students get to choose any classes they like during j term, And I really wanna lift up dignity and joy in the LGBTQIA community. One of the classes offered then is taught by Rory Hutchison, who is in the room today. This class brought queer youth and queer community elders together, and students told the teacher that the class made them feel seen, understood, and more hopeful for the future. Small classes like these are labor and resource intensive. The opportunities are only possible when schools have ample funding. Funding caps that penalize districts that vote to make a larger investment in their children forces those schools to cut jobs, services, or specialized my specialized programs. It is my hope that you will oppose s two twenty, comes up for a vote in the house. When a community votes to preserve a generous budget, there is no reason for the state to penalize them. Austerity does not help our schools improve, and it does not bring any new families into the school system. But perhaps even more important than financial support is also political support. We've all seen the news reports. High school students held in jail for protesting ICE in Pennsylvania. Winooski School District inundated with threats and hate speech spurred by local extremists in Fox News. My home district, CBU, is being sued by the Trump administration for protecting trans kids. Students and teachers are being threatened, and they are being harmed, and we need every luck level of local and state government to protect students' free speech rights. I ask that when these bills are up for a vote that you pass s two twenty seven, two zero eight, two zero nine, and house bill 81. I also hope that this body will consider any other legislative action that can protect our students from political violence. It has been a really dark time, but I have hope because I see that I live in a state that cares a lot about its children, and I have representatives that care about listening to our constituents. So thank you for your time.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Joy Solomon next.

[Wendy Fogg McIntyre]: Hi, I'm Wendy Fog McIntyre. I'm a para at Rivendell Academy, which is part of the Rivendell School District, which is a bi state school district. So the two elementary schools are in West Fairley and Fairley, Vermont. And the high school, which we call the Academy, is in Norfolk, New Hampshire. And I primarily work with students with IEPs and I've worked at the high school for twenty one years and I love my job and my students. And over the years, I've supported the students in many ways. I've gone to gym classes, supported students in music classes and this past year helped students dissect frogs and biology. Last year, I was in a community classroom supporting students who needed behavioral support as well as educational support. And then we went on a memorable field trip to a farm where we ended up hiking through a sheep field, straight up a hill with a beautiful view and proud students who made it up to the top. This year is not quite so exciting, I'm supporting more students with academic needs. I love watching all the students grow from young middle school students up to seniors in high school. And even though our school is small, everyone I work with is dedicated to our students and to making sure that they are successful and prepared for life after school. Thank you.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: After Joy, we have Cole Pickard.

[Joy Solomon]: I'm Joy Solomon. I'm a special educator at Oxbow Middle High School, and I get to departmentalize of math, which I absolutely love. I teach students that usually come into my classroom and I do seventh, eighth and ninth. They come in saying they can't do math, that their parents don't do math, that their grandparents don't do math. They all have something in their pocket that does the math. And why do they need me? I tell them that anyone can do math and that to make sure that they have full choice and agency over their lives, they need to be able to do the math, and we'll get there together. Then we get to focus on frustration tolerance. A lot of my students, if they don't think they can do it, they definitely don't do it and cannot do it and won't do it. So we get to talk about how if it was easy, they wouldn't need me. And we have all these structures for over one hundred years saying that they do need me, and it's been hard and it will be hard and we can get through it together. Cause one day it will be easy. Last week I had a student just tell me that he counts up from the smallest one to the biggest one to subtract because that's just how he does it. Even though I taught him that about two weeks ago. All of this is to say that it's important that my students know that I believe in them, that I hold them to a high standard, and that I'm consistent in that care and those standards. That's something we need for our teachers too. What I've seen this last budget season is panic. People not knowing what is happening. Misinformation, no information. And we're seeing those things every day in my school. We're not filling positions. We're not hiring for positions. We're slowly and quietly cutting positions to maybe make it okay with something that we don't even know what it's gonna look like in a few months. If I've learned anything from all my education courses, it's that we care the way we've been cared for. And if we're caring for the people who are caring for our kids like this, with inconsistency, with not knowing what's coming next, with not knowing how to plan for the future, how do you expect those people to be consistent and caring for the students? I'm asking you to put in that consistency, to put in health care premiums that I can see, that I can research, which hospital is better, To make it so that I know that a student who's running through the halls, we can hire for that position instead of taking five people's time for an hour and a half every day last week. If we're not actually planning correctly, we're actually spending more time, more money on less results. And that's what we're seeing today. So I ask you to please make these things transparent and consistent and give some peace of mind to the people that are caring for the people that matter most in our schools, which are the kids. Thank you.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: After Cole, we have Matt Gile.

[Cole Peacart]: Good morning. My name is Cole Peacart, and I work in the IT department at Essex Westwood School District. Little bit more about me. I was born and raised here, and I'm a I'm a product of the Vermont State education system rather recently. Graduated 2016. I am here to speak to you about the impact of career technical education centers and how to better support student interested in the trades and careers indispensable to the state of Vermont. Let's see there. I'm a lifelong Vermonter, who, aside from a college education, out of state, lived his life here, and I intend on staying. As an adult working and contributing to the workforce that Vermont desperately tries to cultivate, I have no real regrets except for one. I graduated Nessex High School in 2016 with a degree that I feel appropriately and, you know, prepared me for the future, but I never looked to the side of what opportunities were available to me, aka the Center for Technology, Essex, right

[Toby Bashaw]: in

[Cole Peacart]: my own building. Never really considered that to be an option. Now that I have the benefit of hindsight and an insider's perspective, I'm kicking myself. Students enrolled at the Center for Technology Essex are learning practical skills that are in demand today, be it carpentry, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, automotive repair, emergency medical nursing, dental assisting, engineering, cosmetology, graphic design and others. Students enrolled are learning skills and certifications that are in demand now. Most of these fields are in constant need of more labor in industries that need not be cultivated here. They already exist in our state. Have you tried getting a contractor to work on your house? What's the lead time? Three, six months. When was the last time you tried to visit the dentist? How far out are they booking? Seven, eight, kind of for any procedures? CTE building trades students are out building actual houses that people buy. Now, I have my own kind of thoughts about buying a house built by high schoolers, but I I suppose that they were supervised and inspected along the way. CTE Pro foods programs are cooking community meals. Cosmetology is giving out haircuts to the elderly. These are things that are actively contributing to the community at hand. Anecdotally, I frequent a barbershop with a person cutting my hair as a former CTE cosmetology student. Please don't take this as a referendum on their skill. This is all good evidence. Promise. But when I talk shop with them, because I like learning things about new things, it's obvious how deeply knowledgeable and skilled that they are with their craft despite the lack of a great campus to be working on at the time. And I know that this is built on a bedrock of a great technical education. Most graduates will be able to join the workforce immediately upon graduation. No student loans. No federal aid. Likely being paid for on the job training through an apprenticeship or other programs. The limiting factor in admitting more students to CTE right now is space. We routinely get between seven and eight hundred applicants with the space to accept 300 of them. That's quite a few that we have to turn away. There is a willingness to increase capacity, but the funding to construct new facilities through local bond votes is not something that the taxpayers in our district would approve. Additionally, finding and supporting trade professionals to obtain teaching license would increase the capacity. But the bottleneck that we face right now is space. There's one HVAC lab. There's one automotive shop. There's spaces right now at the factor. With your support sorry. I miswrote that. Sorry. I ask that you support lifting the moratorium on school construction and aid from the state so that hopefully we can add some new people to a labor force here in the

[Cole Peacart]: state of Vermont. Thank you.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Now we're gonna have Lisa. Lisa Ellis.

[Matt Gile]: Hi. I'm Matt Gyle. I'm a librarian from Newsky School District and a resident of the Newsky myself. Our library in Windham is pre k through twelfth grade, so I get to see absolutely everyone. And this is my tenth year at Windham, so kids that I was reading stories with in second grade are graduating this year. And it's a joy to support students' curiosity through their whole academic journey, which gives me the kind of special opportunity to see some of the seeds planted in elementary school blossom. I get to support students' interests as they grow into passions and ultimately into decisions about how they want to explore and change our world after they leave school. Students always get nostalgic in their senior year. They come walk around our storytime area, which I made sure stayed the same through our construction, and I ask if and they always ask if I remember storytime when they were in elementary, which of course I do. But I've realized that I can never predict what they remember, what lesson or story or activity they've carried with them this time, making clothespin fairies and hiding them in the garden after reading Alice the Fairy, or when I had a student read Gerald's lines, and today I will fly, and they could still recite some of their lines, Gerald's lines, in their Gerald voice all those years later. For the time, I mispronounced Diplodocus and a student corrected me. Or a boy who spoke no English at the time when he was in elementary school said he remembered when we read Stinky Cheese Man, and he he told me he couldn't understand what I was saying at the time. But when I said, run.

[Caroline Tomley]: Run. Run, fancy king. English man.

[Joy Solomon]: I'm a Stinky Cheese man.

[Matt Gile]: It was the stupidest thing he had ever heard, but he laughed. And it made him think, Oh, maybe books can be fun. Learning to read is difficult and complex and requires carefully designed curriculum and specialized support from educators and real work and persistence from our students. And in library, we can show students that whatever their text decoding skills are at the moment, they can engage with and participate in a story. They can analyze characters. They can sit with a book and be engrossed flipping through pages, and they can explore and learn about themselves in the world. When students are motivated by joy and curiosity to read, that can carry them through moments where learning to read is difficult and frustrating, and it can become a passion that they carry with them for their lives. So we got the Children Literacy Foundation's Year of the Book grant this year, and it has been beautiful and wonderful. It's given us an opportunity to bring in Caledonia winner Jason Chin to draw with our students. Poet Rajne Edens came in and read with our students to talk with parents about the importance of reading with kids. We're going to have the Vermont Institute of Natural Science. It's going to come with some birds and a lizard in my library and talk about animals and myths and legends, and so many books that our students get to take. At every event, they get two books they get to take and choose and keep and cherish. And it's really been beautiful and wonderful. These are the types of events I used to be able to fund out of my library budget, which has decreased by almost 50% since 2018, almost 60% if you're adjusting for inflation. I'm doing all I can to maintain a collection that is relevant for pre K through twelfth grade students that reflects and represents them. And we all know high school budgets are rising. It's not because districts are indulging in unnecessary extravagance. It's rising costs and the fact that our students need more and more support so that they're ready to receive an education because of failures that are happening outside of our school buildings. At Winooski, we have 20 homeless students right now, and if those kids are going to receive an education, we have to do everything we can to make sure they're ready to learn in the morning, and that requires significant resources from our district. But the solution to students being unhoused is not for schools to arrange daily transportation from shelters and provide necessities and warm clothes and support for rental through rental applications. And those are all necessary important things that our district does. But the solution is outside of our school buildings. Solution is to house everybody. If you hold budgets flat while letting the drivers go unaddressed, you're slashing vital services for our students. The wealthy has received an enormous boon from Trump's tax cuts, and we need to reinvest that in our state and communities. Thank you.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: After Lisa, we have Toby Yebashov.

[Lisa Ellis]: Nice to see some familiar faces on the committee. My name is Lisa Ellis, and I'm a preschool teacher at First Branch Unified School District, which is part of WRBSU White River Valley Supervisory Union. Some might also know my current campus as the former K to 12 Chelsea Public School, which for three years has housed both preschool and middle school. Through visionary and inclusive thinking, our program has blended state and local funding with federal head start funding into our district preschool program. This has resulted in decreasing barriers to access such as income and transportation. Also, due to our small size and collaboration, we have been able to provide some of the most unique opportunities for young families to find needed support in small town Vermont. I will begin by explaining to you how this district program has supported the Chelsea Tunbridge economy. We have added a community preschool of choice to our community. Being in the Chelsea Village, it allows family members who might work remotely to walk their preschool children to school daily, either for personal wellness or due to limited transportation options. Our program has also visits on community businesses such as the local post office, the town forest and farms for walking field trips. State childcare subsidies have helped us also be able to provide aftercare until 05:00 for families that need a program accessible to working families. One of my para educators walks to school every day. Without this geographic convenience, she would be limited to only one of her two jobs. Another paraeducator cut her commute from one and a half hours a day to ten minutes per day. As you can imagine, this is a huge deal for low to middle income household, given the increased costs in our state. Our preschool has allowed several of our parents and grandparents who were not working at all to start working again. And this includes being substitute teachers in our schools. We have also retained and recruited more licensed teachers and additional staff to our smaller district as a result of having a full day preschool program with an aftercare option. Now I'll share with you how I believe that it is community and collaboration that supports our youngest students. It is not size or economies of scale. Thanks to our blended fund funding with Head Start, we have brought the Echo Leahy Center to our district and our preschoolers twice a year, every year to enhance STEM learning for opportunities for them. We've also had their Museum on Wheels in our Chelsea Gymnasium as a local community and after school event. The Chandler Center for the Arts has performed for us. Older students and middle school teachers have served as classroom lunch buddies and guest readers. We have had we have a head start family advocate who supports families outside of the school with economic needs, including home visiting to work on family centered goals such as co parenting and and or cooking healthy meals on a limited income. Our school nurse sends home food to needy families. This January, we hosted a snowshoeing and sledding party for all our families, every single one of every economic, every economic level came. We taste tested a student authored recipe that was cooked by my students of stone soup and handed out state resources to families. For families with young children. The long commute shown in some of the proposed Act 73 maps will make community events like this nearly impossible to attend. Our supervisory union also provides our district with resources beyond the business office and human resources. Our preschool coordinator manages the very complicated task of out of district Act 166 applications and enrollments. She also provides programs with peer support, intervention and coaching in our area schools in her areas of expertise, which she has many. She also helps organize professional development for our teachers across our Unified School District or Univer Supervisory Union, as well as helps us with child finds greetings, which are federally mandated. She also helps us get grants for equipment, such as our winter tumble time events that we do on Saturdays so that families can get out of the cold weather and get someplace out with their children. These are not pass that others in our districts could handle. Preschool teachers already have to serve as their preschool site director to meet state licensing requirements. I've worked as an early childhood educator in districts of different size in Vermont. This has allowed me to see all sorts of ways in which public education has been striving to only get better and do better with the resources available to us. From my experience, for at least our most vulnerable and younger students and families, smaller is better, bigger is not. First Ranch is the first Vermont district I've observed fully using and training teachers on research based curriculum for math and reading instead of the pricey purchases sitting on shelves to collect dust. Thanks to an effective supervisory union, I can access coaching for anything from preschool program administration, social emotional supports, early math teaching. The coaching is encouraged, but not required. At first branch, we have worked hard to ensure that if a student has an identified need that could affect current or future learning, that they are given the option to access any of the available district or SU services, such as counseling, case management, speech, occupational therapy, nursing and intervention. And if we don't have it, we'll figure out a way to get it to them. If we do not already have something like that in place. Could we do this without our supervisory union team? No, we could not. Is it a system that's perfect? No, it is not. However, we're trying our hardest to give our students equitable access to everything a Vermont public education system has to offer. Bigger districts will only lead to more red tape, politics and complicated systems for our students, families and teachers to navigate. Thank you.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We have Toby Bashaw. I misspoke at the beginning. I thought we only had an hour, but we have until 02:30. But at 02:30, we definitely do have to adjourn. So just to let you know.

[Toby Bashaw]: I could talk fast. My name is Toby Bashar. I've currently been working at the RTCC, the tech center in Randolph, as a special ed math and ELA paraeducatorsubstitute teacher. My background is mostly in the technical field. Prior to coming there, coming to Randolph, I taught for four years in Troy, New York at the Educational Opportunity Center. It's a division of the Hudson Valley Community College. That was a school for at risk adults. So I had recently released prisoners, drug and alcohol rehab residents, and people just trying to get their lives back on the rails. Prior to that, I did four years at Vermont Tech, now Vermont State University, teaching welding and a little bit of machining. And prior to that, I did ten years at MIT for the Material Science Department as a technical instructor doing those machining and welding and basically materials. And across all those schools, I saw some degree of food insecurity. And so I, first of all, want to thank you for whatever you've done to keep the free breakfast and free lunch program going in Vermont schools. I grew up having to pay for lunch, and there was no breakfast up in Northern New York. And I will say that the food at the Randolph program, I think, is fabulous. It's so good and so nutritious. That's really a testament to the work of Sarah, who runs that cafeteria. She did allude to the fact that there is some risk of losing part of that program. So I would implore you to do whatever you can to keep that going, because you can't learn if you're hungry. And secondly, and this is somewhat adjacent to the nutritional aspect of this, as a paraeducator, I'm assigned to the cafeteria from eight to nine in the morning, which is when the tech students are eating breakfast. And it's a great time for me to talk to students. They come and sit with me. I know things about students that nobody else in the school knows, I guarantee it. They talk to me about health issues, both mental and physical, alcoholism in their families, what's happening with their girlfriends and boyfriends, the fact that one young man has two upcoming Ford appointments for being, as he put it, stupid behind the wheel. And I learned things about these kids, and they I've really developed a trust with them. And I feel badly for the teachers, the program teachers and the math and the English teachers at Randolph, because there is no time for them to do this with these students. There's no time, unless they come to breakfast or maybe lunch, but lunch is half an hour of mayhem and breakfast is an hour of pretty good time. There's no time between classes. You're depending on Scotty to beam you up from math to ELA or wherever, because there is zero time between classes, for the students or the teachers. And so there's no time for them to really get to know the students and form a relationship with them. And, you know, just be people with them. I had one young woman say to me, Toby, you're my favorite. She said, You're like the grandfather I never had. And I feel that, know, as one of my college professors said years back, I was much older than most of the college students. I went late. This is my second time. Wonderful man from Holland. And I had a colleague at I was at SUNY Potsdam, and I had a colleague at St. Lawrence University who was very suicidal. And Jan Pullman, the Dutch professor that had become a good friend of mine, said, You know what these kids really need is not advice about augmented sixth sports. They need a good friend. And I really feel that that's true. Yeah, they have friends among their colleagues and their peers, but they need someone I don't wanna say with authority. They need someone with experience to be their friend. So was a wonderful opportunity for me at the tech center to get to know these students and learn about their, you know, the things about for which we should be celebrating. One young man who's a champion small bore rifle shooter went to the nationals in Wyoming. Another young woman who went to Madison, Wisconsin for dairy award with her cow. And so I just feel that, you know, over 50% of I'm talking about the tech center now, not the high school, but over 50% of our students have IEPs. And as I read through some of the IEPs, I think, Wow, this is gonna be a real challenge. And then I meet these students, and they're great. You know, they have all these things that they're doing and that we don't know about because we don't bother to listen to them to find out what the rest of their life is like. You know, school is after their, you know, what seems like an intolerable bus ride to me for some of them, especially from the U32 district out East Montpelier, Caledonia, that area, they have four or five hours with us, and then that's it. And then they have the whole rest of So please keep up this food program. I think it's probably the best single, and it's kind of small compared to a lot of other things. But I think it's doing a tremendous amount when they can come in, sit down, relax, have breakfast, and maybe get something off their chest. Thanks very much.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We have time for one more. Jensen, if you want, Jensen Welch, if you want to speak.

[Toby Bashaw]: Thank you.

[Wendy Fogg McIntyre]: Thank you

[Jensen Welch]: for hosting all of us here today. I'm Jensen Welch. I've been a math teacher and currently the high school teaching and learning folks at Bellows Free Academy in Fairfax. That's the smaller BFA, if you're familiar with the bigger BFA in St. August. Just looking at the time. Okay. I was inspired to testify today because Collin Robinson, Vermont NEA said they wanted to hear celebrations. And at BFA, Fairfax, we learned last week, I think, that we were named as one of the high schools exceeding expectations in our graduation rate over x years and so on and so forth. And that has been hard work over many years, particularly we saw success because we were able to expand our access to flexible pathways for high school students. I know my colleague just shared some concerns about early college. Pathways. We've heard from a bunch of my colleagues about the importance of technical centers, another really important flexible pathway. The students at BFA, Fairfax, access four different technical centers that are local to our area. Online learning, dual enrollment generally. And then I think the two pieces that we've really expanded more recently are work based learning opportunities and apprenticeships. Have one of our seniors is an apprentice with MEI Electrical. He's on the job with them at 5AM every morning and makes it back to school for the last block of the day so he can complete his requirements. Also, recently, we've been trying to meet the requirements of Act 73 and class size minimums. And so these two pieces of offering choice, important choice for our high school students, and having to meet these class size minimums feel really incompatible and contradictory. And so I understand funding is question, and I would encourage the committee to look at not trying to always reduce the education funding, but what are ways we can increase the revenue so that we don't have to take choices away from students and potentially limit our small schools, small high schools, and the opportunities for our students. Think I'll end there because I could keep going.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I appreciate it.

[Vicki Johnson]: Thank you. You're very welcome.