Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Welcome to House Education Wednesday, April 16. The committee is

[Grace (school leader; full name unknown)]: using

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: updates on the status of things out there in the world. And one of the sort of initiatives that started back when we had COVID dollars I'm to pause a second. You sit now?

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: Pretend you're talking in a rock.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm already echoing my own opinion. Anyways, one of the initiatives that we were able to start with some COVID dollars several years ago was a community schools effort, which has really been inspiring and fascinating sort of watched progress. And so today we're going to get an update on that with two folks very much involved in the efforts. And just have you introduce yourselves and really just turn it over to you. Welcome and thanks for being here.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: Well, thank you so much for having us. I know how busy all of you have been. And so to make time, we really appreciate it. I'm Jessica Karless. I was formerly at the Agency of Education and was responsible for drafting the grant and implementing Act 67. And I'm now here in a different capacity, I'm joined by my colleague.

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: Everyone. I'm Bernice Garnett. Good to see you all again. Thanks for having us back. I'm an associate professor in the College of Education and Social Services and the principal investigator of

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: the Catamac Community Schools Collaborative. Okay, so technology wise, we've practiced. So we're going to try to share the screen and hopefully this will work.

[Grace (school leader; full name unknown)]: Okay. Think that works.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: That works. Okay. So we can move past this slide, but we are here representing a larger group. So obviously, we're here on behalf of the dedicated professionals who are in the field. There are myriad community and state level partners. We're joined by our colleague John Castle from the Vermont Rural Education Collaborative, Public Assets Institute, Voices Vermont Children. There is a collective group of individuals who I think you even spoke to, I think representatives Brady Brown and Conlon, you were in house said with the passage of Act 67. And I think you heard from a lot of people and national experts about what community schools was. But we were told to maybe back up a little bit and give a bit of a high level overview for those of you that this might be new to. We also brought some homework. There will be a test. We have some handouts that on a Saturday night, can just peruse it over a glass of wine. But it does have some additional information that we did not include. But if you would want us to submit it digitally, we can do that.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm gonna just interrupt for a second for newer committee members. You'll often hear me, and you'll probably see it tomorrow with tomorrow's amendments, when people talk about community schools, I always have to clarify with their capital C, capital S, because it's a concept, or are they talking about their school and their community?

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: Thanks for that clarification. My name

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: is Shelford Community School. Capital C, capital S.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: So throughout the presentation, you're going to see slides switch back and forth where we are capturing statements, contributions that people from the field have made about community schools. This is from a community school coordinator at North Country Supervisory Union. And we also wanted to start with a video which will also test our technological savvy. But again, the importance of presenting community schools and giving you a sense, it's really hard to describe as Chair Conlon said capital C capital S community schools, it is a framework. But again, schools are really resistant to describing because they are such complex ecosystems in which there are so many sectors that flow through school. So let's hope this works. I have to turn on the sound. Let's see. I think we did that. We practiced.

[Video participant (state official; name unknown)]: The federal government put out COVID recovery money for states to do innovative things with. The State of Vermont made the choice to take a portion of that money to fund a pilot program, five community school sites. We gave them funding for three years and said, let's see what we can do.

[Video participant (community school coordinator/educator; name unknown)]: I moved to Vermont in the early nineties when there was something called high schools on the move that focused students at the center of their learning, community partnerships, personalized learning plans.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: From the beginning there was this alignment with existing regulation. You know, section one of Title XVI to goals of the Every Student Succeeds Act to Act 77 or Act 173.

[Video participant (community school coordinator/educator; name unknown)]: Right? And there have been a lot of efforts to make it happen, but no overall structure pulling in all the assets that we have in our communities in the way that the community school model does.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: I don't think I anticipated that it would help people as much as it has in creating a narrative about school for themselves, for their staff, for their families, for their communities, for students.

[Video participant (Hazen Union leadership; name unknown)]: When we looked at all of the, I'm going call them initiatives, programs, interventions, innovations that the school was trying, each one of them fit under one of those five pillars of a community school. It was this chance to sort of unify everything that we had been up to under one vision of Hazen could be, and it gave us a way to see ourselves.

[Video participant (school staff; name unknown)]: There were already things happening here that really fed into the idea of community schools. What this shift allowed us to do is to build out the idea of community schools.

[Video participant (state official; name unknown)]: From a certain point of view, you could say that, like, all of our schools are community schools. They're they're situated in communities. They belong to communities. They're answerable to communities. But I think what makes capital c capital S, community schools

[Beth Quimby (Community Schools Coordinator/Principal)]: do is that there

[Video participant (state official; name unknown)]: is an active and affirmative choice to step into that role, to really engage with the issues and the concerns of the people they're serving, to really connect with these opportunities, to be more involved in engaging with things outside of what you could really narrowly define as being the role of school.

[Video participant (community school coordinator; name unknown)]: I bet that if you went to each school, there would be a different answer to what community schools means and to what a community schools coordinator does.

[Video participant (interviewer; name unknown)]: Thinking about community schools as a machine or perhaps a vehicle. So if community schools was a car, what part of that vehicle would you say the coordinator might be?

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: I know. Well, the driver, of course. Mean, jeez.

[Video participant (community school coordinator; name unknown)]: I'm kind of the engine because I

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: helped create the plan. Maybe the headlines? Something that kind of shines outward.

[Video participant (school/community liaison; name unknown)]: I really see the community coordinator role as being connected with every piece of the school and then every piece of the community at that school has connection to.

[Video participant (community school coordinator/educator; name unknown)]: So I see my position as really knowing the community and knowing what the needs are and knowing our assets are and trying to put it all together.

[Video participant (community school coordinator; name unknown)]: As needs of students have grown, we've had to be more intentional about what a community school is and how it serves not just the basic needs of students but also the needs for connection and relationship for families and community members.

[Video participant (community school coordinator/educator; name unknown)]: When a student doesn't come to school, it's a complicated problem. It's not just because the student isn't showing up.

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: I think every district should have a program like this, really.

[Video participant (Hazen Union leadership; name unknown)]: If the learning was more accessible, more relevant, more flexible, wrapping services and coordinating services between students, that we should see a reduction in absenteeism in ninth grade, and we saw that reduced by almost 50%. We saw a one quarter reduction in hazing and harassment and bullying and a one third reduction overall behaviors. That could be many factors. I suspect though it's part of our overall wraparound holistic approach to community schooling.

[Video participant (school board member; name unknown)]: How do we make things better for kids? How do we make things for the community? And knowing that, the school board says like, what do you guys think? And they support where we're going. I can unplug it and you guys can untangle it and lay it out straight. That would be a

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: huge help.

[Video participant (state official; name unknown)]: Been at this for ten years on the board. And

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I've

[Video participant (state official; name unknown)]: made a complete 180 in terms of what I think about education.

[Video participant (community school coordinator; name unknown)]: I think that what I want people to know is that every building needs, you know, a community schools coordinator. Every single building needs somebody dedicated to this work.

[Beth Quimby (Community Schools Coordinator/Principal)]: I think there's just more programs, resources, supplies, all these different facets. I think it's directly related to the community schools grant.

[Video participant (student/staff; name unknown)]: Those things are important when we think about hard times, Like, those are the things that help us come in with like an open mind, with a mind that's focused on like possibility and joy.

[Video participant (community school coordinator; name unknown)]: When I think about like the length of this pilot being only three years, it now feels like only three years. We're just barely learning from what the first two years gave us the chance to try.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: Every single time you start something and then let it end two to three years down the road, not because you haven't had to modify it for effectiveness, but because you ran out of money and didn't think further enough ahead, right, that's a problem.

[Grace (school leader; full name unknown)]: Sorry, I

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: didn't really think I was gonna get so emotional. I think it's, yeah, it's hard to realize that the grant's ending.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: We need to take an approach in which we are not investing in one offs. It's inefficient, it's harmful, it creates inequity, it codifies inequity.

[Video participant (state official; name unknown)]: So, you know, it was very validating that last session, the community schools funding was allowed to pass into law. We're still a little bit on a treadmill where we we need this to continue and to to grow into a a renewable source of funds.

[Video participant (education policy advocate; name unknown)]: We're trying to maintain two school systems simultaneously, public schools and private schools. And I much prefer the centuries old notion that public dollars should be used for public functions, but that's considered a somewhat out of fashion view, I'm afraid.

[Video participant (community school coordinator/educator; name unknown)]: I went to Philadelphia to that national conference. I was, like, in shock. There are 3,000 people that are doing the same work, but I'm one of five community school coordinators in Vermont, right? So there's this anticipation of what it could be, right? And I just think the community school approach is something that whose time has come.

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: I just want to add to the committee, I think you said it in the video, Jess, but I hope to arrange his testimony. Hope all of us as legislators, like just as an ongoing, I know we're so caught up in the crisis at the moment, but I'm a veteran of six years now, I'm just seeing the discussion of new policy, passing new things, and then not having the time, the capacity to follow through on things. I've been saying six years, I can't wait to do a look back at Act 77 and flexible pathways and really see where we are, what's working and what needs adjustments. So I think this is another, this was in my first and second year, it's really hard in a two year cycle as citizen legislators to come in and not know what came before you. So I really appreciate folks coming in and giving us kind of the backstory here. And I, as legislators, implore us to not just on this. I am passionate about this and that'll bring me to tears, but I think this is true of so many things that were well intentioned, but were in and out quickly. And seeing things through is just so important. And I know that, Brittany, you're probably talking about implementation science. Like Policymakers, we want to see the goods, the results quick, because

[Beth Quimby (Community Schools Coordinator/Principal)]: we have to be able to

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: tell that to the public and people have short attention spans. But the reality of change, systemic change, it's slow and hard and long. And that is also, I think, our job as policymakers to push the public to accept the rate of change that is realistic. So thank you for coming in. We're going to talk about other issues later this morning. I think these are all part of our ongoing work that we're constantly sort of fighting the fire at the moment we lose sight of, and it's not good for our tax dollars, our communities, our schools, but it is just sort of the nature of the use of this citizen legislature to your cycles too.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm also gonna interrupt for a second. To see, again, the newer folks, again, this was funded initially with a lump sum of money that was granted out to schools from COVID era dollars. What was really different from this than any other grant program I've seen is that there was collaboration between the AOE and the University of Vermont where essentially the University of Vermont was an accountability partner to say, all right, are these dollars working? Is it doing what it's supposed to do? And so that's really been to me one of the most interesting parts of this process is to really check up and say, hey, has this been a worthwhile investment?

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: And has allowed it to not totally die even when state dollars run out. But again, it raises a lot of fiscal questions about how we do this kind of work, whether it's community schools or something else, because there isn't always going to be a university to pick up, nor is that necessarily going to be the only way to sustain it going forward.

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: Can someone remind me what we

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: did for funding beyond the open investment? In Act 168, you provided an additional $1,000,000 and that was broken into sort of two pots. So for the community school grantees, we call them cohort one, the folks that you just saw on screen and we will be creating digital stories for our cohort two. They received, there was $575,000 grants just so that even though unfortunately I think one school did have to lose its community school coordinator, but to just maintain some continuity in that position. And then the new grantees, it was competitive grant, but those dollars weren't, that competition wasn't finalized and those dollars weren't awarded until February. So they literally only had from February to June 30 to implement. And so the coordination and accountability partner absolutely, but really it was the research arm with UVM and the accountability was a decision to bring UVM in and to partner in order to ensure that there was a third party who was engaged in that research and evaluation process, but it really was a partnership. And I think the people that who were most accountable were obviously the practitioners. We do have some community school folks in the room right now. Hopefully we're going to have a few more join us, but that million dollars, I don't even think, I think some folks got $84,000 etcetera. And that's really hard. That's not also a responsible stewardship of public dollars if you have people who are trying to hustle to implement something that's systemic within a four month period, essentially. So a lot of people had to leave money on the table. I did want to just pass this around because it came up and I saw some head nods from high schools on the move. So one thing to support folks, and again, you can use this to feed your last wood fire statement or whatever. But this was a crosswalk that I put together around the twenty years of education legislation in Vermont and how it aligns with the community school pillars to just see. This isn't also kind of like a surprise. Think when you pass this legislation, you put this into law, what you are seeing is how integrated, how it was bringing all of these statutes and rules together into one place for ease of implementation. So again, you don't have to look at it now, but we just wanted to provide that. So I think what you heard here in the digital story is really the piece that I want people to walk away with is that it's not an add on. It's not a program. It's really a way of approaching schooling that is integrated and doesn't paralyze people. You hear a lot initiative fatigue. In many ways, what happens is as we're passing laws, and this is just a natural consequence of two year cycle legislative cycles and problems as they arise, is as we try to fix it, we're just adding them on top. Right? And people struggle to understand how they work together. And it's not always possible to explain how it works together. But community schools very naturally with five pillars, craves all of our existing policy into a space in which people can understand it. I think one of the things that has really struck many of our implementers is this idea of multi tiered systems of support, right? Those layered systems of support where you want to be thinking about it's not just academics, it's not just social emotional well-being, it's not just about physical well-being, it's not just about high quality teaching, it's all together. When they get braided together in a way that makes sense to people, instead of it being I think I've described it as if you took a book and you just threw it up in the air and all the pages weren't numbered, then someone was like, Put it back together. That's how people see a lot of the policy that we passed. But instead, this turns it into a readable story for folks.

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: So as we've been talking about, community schools are not new to Vermont. It's actually baked into the ethos and ideology of schools and community and schools, particularly in rural states. If you look back to some of the early grants that focused on community education, community schools was called community education 1920s. It was very much centered on rural spaces. So this is not a new ideology, a new framework. John Dewey, who's an alum of UVM, was sort of one of the pioneers of the community schools movement in the turn of the century that really focused on an anti poverty sort of focus and equity centered, which very much aligns with how Vermont wrote the Act 67 language. I think this quote from Joy Dreyfus up here in the top corner from 1998 when Harvard and Yale were in Vermont studying the community school's implementation at the Molly Stark School down in Bennington, which is one of the first schools to receive Robert Wood Johnson Foundation funding to implement community schools nationally, said the state of Vermont appears to be ready to communicate these ideas and to these ideas to other schools and to encourage and plan a network of full service community schools. The state of Vermont appears to be ready. And I think we have piecemeal opportunities that we've done. And I really encourage us to think about and to your point, representative, think about reflecting on the good work and ensuring that community schools as a framework to integrate some of the newer, timely, pressing needs like chronic absenteeism. I see you're going to be hearing from my colleague, Doctor. Heidi Schumacher, after community schools as a framework that we as a university use to integrate technical assistance and support to our community school colleagues to support some of those targeted student outcomes that are supported by a holistic framework. So community schools for university side is an incredibly helpful organizing framework when I'm talking to colleagues in agroecology, food systems, clinical pediatric mental health who want to support schools but not overwhelm in piecemeal fashion. So just like for the K-twelve community, these schools is incredibly helpful for university colleagues. So this just gives a sense of not only the national context in terms of funding, predominantly, new schools have been funded nationally by the Full Service Community School grant that was administered by the US DOE that has been sunsetted for the past two years. But it sounds like it's going to come back online through the agency of Health and Human Services at the federal level, which I think actually Vermont would be well poised to consider applying for at the LEA level. States universities don't seem to be eligible applicants yet, but again, to the nature of the partnerships because we could partner with our LEA partners in writing a giant federal grant, which is overwhelming and time consuming, right, to support that. So that's another reciprocal benefit of our research practice partnership.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Can I review for a second? Yes. Because applying for federal grants are exactly as you described, overwhelming and too much for LEAs. Yes. So what you're saying is that you'll be able to assist with that.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: We would be

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: able to be the PI or from what I'm understanding from So the federal government is not a shy thing right now of institutes of higher education. So it doesn't look like we'd

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: be able to be the fiscal agent, but we'd

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: be able to support

[Beth Quimby (Community Schools Coordinator/Principal)]: grant writing.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: Is an arm of the CCSC that we've been trying to lean into. I would just sort of back up a little bit. As far as projections, what I've just seen is that FY27 skinny budget at the federal level is zeroing out both 21c and community schools. And so again, this changes, right, and it's variable. But again, you're going hear us, so I just want to be upfront about it, making the pitch around a small investment at the part of the state could continue to support this as we see the, let's call it, shifting nature of federal decision making. Because again, we saw that it was like, great, they're going to move it forward. That was the last technical assistance call that we were on. Then I just saw that the FY twenty seven skinny budget is zeroing out. And it's not the only victim. Right? We know that poor programs, title programs are also under threat. So I just wanted to be transparent about that.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Sure. Could you repeat this again? So you just were informed that the federal budget

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: FY27 has a projected skinny budget of zeroing out both 21C, which is after school,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: five year after school placement. It has

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: been our biggest network of after school programming for decades in this state.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And schools.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: And community schools, among others. And I can send you that link. And again, it's a mercurial federal government right now. It's the best way that I could say that in an appropriate fashion. So just in also looking at the history of this, we have another handout, another homework assignment. Again, it could line your kitty litter. But from the national level, it talks about the sort of history. So I think what we really appreciated is that you heard from national experts, you heard from people come in and say, particularly in the height of the pandemic, we needed to be braiding things and thinking more holistically about students. And you made those decisions based on an evidence base. So

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: quickly, wanted to situate the role of research, right? I'm a little bit biased because I am a researcher, as I guess, as a disciplinary trait, if you will, but really research to inform practice, practice to inform research and also to inform policy evaluation implementation. And we've done a ton of work in the five years that we've had a research practice partnership to understand what's working, but also to align our methodology with best practices from the national landscape. That's where Vermont is being looked at actually by our national colleagues on rural implementation, state university and community school partnerships. So we've done a lot of testimonies. We've done a lot of national conferences. But I think our pride and joy is really using data to give back to our community school partners to inform practice on the ground. And that could look like I do a lot of what's called implementation science research, which asks core questions like what's working for whom, under what conditions and in what time frame. We naturally want things to work immediately and want to see changes in chronic absenteeism and attendance and scores. But you need to understand the mechanisms by which those changes are occurring. That actually is done by talking to people, qualitative research, right? So we leave this work by making sure our methodologies are human centered, our partnership oriented, And we leverage digital stories to communicate the quantitative and qualitative data that can get flat and devoid of context without having those stories. And so this is a logic model up there on the left for schools to use in their school board reports to showcase all of the things they're doing organized by the pillars. Very small up there. And one of our community school coordinators, other principals has this logic model on his door. So anyone walking by can see all of the stuff they're doing transparent about the use of funds at the school level as well. We publish a bunch of different, all freely accessible on our website. We're really diving into looking at the intersection. And my background is in public health, so a bit biased there. But the intersection between community schools, public health, and that two sided point of health and education. It's a mutually reciprocal reinforcing effect when we look at the role of health and education together to promote positive youth development and community well-being. Schools and community schools try to make a hub of well coordinated resources to tackle food insecurity, chronic absenteeism, access to health and wellness by embedding school based health centers, clinical mental health, social workers. All of that is happening within our community schools. And we have fabulous community school principals and coordinators sitting right here that can speak more to that. So we published reports on the role of the school nurse, key enabling condition, right? The role of community school coordinator, which you heard Sam and Lynn and Mary and Viva talk about in the digital story. And then we published a 300 plus page report on Act 67 evaluation. But we do have the brief here of what we learned. What was the role of the State Agency of Education? What was the role of the timeline? How were the funds used? What were the socially significant outcomes that we looked at? And we have a slide on if we get to. So we have all of that documented. We're replicating that with our cohort two schools, which I'll talk about in a moment.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: I think not to leave out or to make sure that we emphasize, but a key driver, a key engine of this were the practitioners. So prior to us even establishing a relationship, we convened a cohort of community school principals and community school coordinators. They showed up quarterly. We met quarterly with them for check ins to see how they're doing as a group, and then also had quarterly check ins with them as individual sites, which we then turned into site based visits. And I think what you find is that when you provide support, people want to be accountable. People rise to accountability. That was really important. So even without the benefit of having a university like the University of Vermont, being able to bring some resources in, what you find is bringing people together is really important. I think we forget how isolating it can to be an educator and particularly an education leader in Vermont, right? Because a lot of them, they're singletons, right? So I just wanted to name that. Also, just because we mentioned it, we'll send this around.

[Beth Quimby (Community Schools Coordinator/Principal)]: That's a policy breakdown. Yes.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: You guys are going to regret inviting us all. All right. So I think the big finding that And again, these are when you see these italicized, these are individual practitioners' words, is that really it's the mindset and practice it. So we had a lot of folks who said, I thought of school as this way, but I've come around and I understand that school needs to be like this. That transformation, think you'll see I included this picture. This is the logic model on the principle of Torque along with these delightful pictures from students. And this idea that in Vermont, often because the single biggest investment in a community is the school, and that in lots of places, I live in the Northeast Kingdom, so I know folks in here can recognize that don't often have partners are actually individuals. They're not necessarily organizations abounding. Is that they are the one game in town and the most reliable game in town. And what I really loved about this quote is a principal saying, I teach everybody who walks in the door and many who cannot. And that is true. We know post COVID and the trailing effects of COVID still live in our school systems. Others may have moved on. Our schools and our students haven't, it's going to take time. But knowing that that does take, there's some risks that come with that and the importance of making sure that we give sufficient time. I came in 2023. Remember you folks wanted to look, there's like 10 bills that you were looking at that you wanted to sort of walk through and see what were going to be the implications for the education quality standards or Title 16. And even then we talked about it, right? Which is we can create the conditions in two year cycles for change. But in order to really see that change, because this is a human endeavor, you're really looking at seven to ten years, right? So I just wanted

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: to share that. So in terms of a quick preview, I know we're almost at the top of the hour, what we learned from ACT 67 cohort one, and this is what we're looking to replicate to see if we're seeing these outcomes in the cohort two schools, which we'll talk about in a moment. We aligned our outcomes with the national outcomes of what community schools and evidence base are known to support effective change, not only for students, but for community families and educators in the overall climate of the schools. And so this idea of multilevel impact or multiplying effective community schools is really apparent nationally and in Vermont. And you've heard on the short digital story from the Hazen, the sort of reductions in chronic absenteeism and disciplinary referral. We have a lot of amazing data related to programming that invites community into school for lifelong community engaged learning, which I think is at the core of the community schools connected place based lifelong learning that's relevant, rigorous and leverages local assets and local community partners. Right? So this is a picture from the Canaan Academy of adult education that just launched this spring with community school funding. Up on the top left corner is a snapshot of the intergenerational meals program up at Newport Town School, where once a week community elders eat lunch with elementary students and then engage in a structured game to encourage social emotional learning, reduce elder isolation and increase food insecurity. We're scaling that program to other elementaries in North Country, hopefully across our community school partners. We also think it's really important that we recognize the changing dynamics of our communities by ensuring that our engagement and outreach is aligned with the languages, cultures, values and identities of our communities. And what often looks like needing to translate, needing to partner with community organizations to ensure our programming meets the needs of our community. Then down below is a BiTECH program at Hazen, this idea of deeper learning, making sure that our learning is relevant so that kiddos want to come to school. Educators are in partnership with youth in authentic ways to build technical skills, to build lifelong learning. And I believe some of the students from the Bike Tech program created a bike repair shop off of the Lemoyle Rail Trail in Danville because it was a needed resource. And so we're replicating this similar structure with our Cohort two schools. So the Catamount Community Schools Collaborative through an earmark through Senator Sanders' office was awarded a three year $1,900,000 federal grant stewarded through the United States Department of Education, now in Department of Labor, to scale the community schools model to new community schools. And we did that in partnership with the AOE. So we were scrambling to see if the state was gonna bring additional dollars in, and they did. So the AOE funded the first year of programming for our six new districts, and UVM is now funding year two and year three. So we're in total supporting 11 districts, 38 schools, roughly 9,000 students with community school funding, technical assistance, and community of practice right now. So these are new cohort two schools. Some of them are in the room. And we're seeing similar programming utilization of services. Because before you look at outcomes, you have to look at dosage, exposure, and spread of your programming. And that's what we're doing right now. We have site visits planned for the spring as our qualitative And I guess I would just want to

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: make a point, which is with community schools, one of the things we've heard is, okay, are we extending the school into a space in which it's taking on the work of other institutions or organizations? But it's not. Really what it's doing is it's leveraging partnerships. So it's not the school, which so often happens, the school paying for a service, which even happens with our designated agencies. Essex North has to contract for services and doesn't get the Medicaid reimbursement. So what you're looking for is by bringing your unique skills together into the school space where you have the captive audience of students and families, right? I mean, that's the biggest hub, social hub for services and including community members in. What you're doing is you're getting services to individuals faster and more efficiently, not that you're duplicating services. And that has been a focus. When we created the research practice partnership, I added the policy, it's a research practice policy partnership, because we know that policy access permission, right? Not just as a precept, and that we want to give people permission to explore those things in order to find those efficiencies. I also would want to just note, and again, I know Ernie stated this, the funding from the agency, as you heard me say, it was not a full year. They had to turn a lot of money back, right? Because you can't get it in February. All know Act 67, I mean, because I had to go through this in the height of the pandemic, money was supposed to be at schools by September 1. They got it mid to late February. So really people started implementing this year. And what you're looking at is a very early snapshot right now. Beth Quimby is in the room. 600 meal boxes through a partnership have been delivered to families in the Berlin and U32 communities. This is work that they're doing that you're not going to see here. I just want to be clear that this is a very shallow view. The last point I guess I want to make is lots of times you hear people say, well, isn't school about learning? It is. White River Valley, seventy three percent of fourth graders at Bethel Elementary were proficient or exceeding proficiency on the English language arts VT cap. They are a community school partner. They are awardee. They are also making progress academically. And I think what you'll see is if your body is good and your mind is good, right? Your academics can be good. But you've got to bridge that gap.

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: Can you just restate the funding? Yes. So everybody here understands. So like now you said 1,900,000,000.0 was a federal earmark. This is Senator Sanders was able to get a set amount for this project. Right.

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: And we were very grateful that we were able to get a multi year because generally the marks are only one year. I tried very diligently to try to communicate implementation science to understand that it took two years, but this is the map to showcase. So orange stars are the schools that receive that braided funding of a half a year from the state and then year two and year three. So 2025 to 2027 from UBM through that federal earmark, which will sunset next July. And just to contextualize this, because I know that you're having these broader discussions, right? So 11 SU SDs, that's 21% of our total supervisory unions and districts. And

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: when we look at the number of schools that are within those supervisory unions and districts, even if we just narrow it to community schools, we were very conservative to say, Okay, is this where we see implementation happening and not on the ground in the building versus happening maybe in the central office and sort of serving kind of district wide programs. So that's 12% of our public schools in the boundaries of Vermont, right? Which is 22% of a total population of students for, and I would just say, a small investment. I mean, has been consistent that as you do this, you're finding that it starts to become self sustaining.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Self sustaining in the sense that frankly, some of the schools are taking on these costs. So it's still being funded just in a different way.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: Correct. But this idea that if people were concerned, is it then that we will continuously have to support 52 SUs, SDs with state funding? That's not the case. But you do in order to implement, right? Because it's not just about learning something new, it's also about having to change your current thinking. So that takes some time, right? Because you sort of have to have this cognitive shift.

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: Is- I know what you just said, self sustaining, but also not just then in future years, the school's taking down the cost, but the partnerships then mean that the services might be delivered at the school or something not connected to the school, but it doesn't necessarily mean the funding. It may, but it does not mean everything is being funded by the school. Just means- Correct. Have a slide that maybe will speak

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: to that. No, no, no. It's a great question. But I think this idea that even practitioners seeing that it aligns the systems to increase access and understand that we're coming up on time. I think we sort of covered this, but continuing to support and have the infrastructure, the Caledonia Community School Coalition, which is made up of the community schools and practitioners of the research university and individuals, but also of state level community partners. We have not named everybody here because as you can see, really try to fit. Wait till you see the last slide. It's just chaos. But there's a lot of people who once they sort of in that space, they see and that they're not in competition, but that they can work in concert with each other, that they're starting to see benefits. Benefits for partners, benefits for schools. So as an example. And so quickly, one

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: of the many constant human capital resources of university are students that are eager to have experiential learning just like the K-twelve population. And so one of the strategies of the Catamount Community Schools Collaborative is to match university undergraduate and graduate students with a community school partner on the ground to serve a need, build capacity, extend capacity. So in the past two years, we've placed 25 interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate students across our community schools. And we, with the partnership of the Lakey Institute for Rural Partnerships, created a summer place based residential learning program where UVM students learned in place. So 12 students lived in the Bethel area last summer and supported community schools programming in and around the White River Valley Middle School. And what that does is so many different things, not only for the community partners, but also to change the narrative of what is school, what is education, and workforce development. Because they might not become classroom teachers, but you're going to potentially be living in a community and voting on school budgets at some point in your life. And so we heard from our undergraduate students who had majors not in education, engineering, agroecology, public health. I didn't know you could build a boat in schools. I didn't know you could ride a bike. Like this idea that schools are not confined to the building is very much part of the Vermont ethos, but not necessarily part of public education that everyone comes from. So we saw some really nice mutually beneficial partnerships. And this is a quote from Pierre Lacrom, who's the principal at White River Valley Middle School, having an intern helped us build momentum around a program that didn't previously exist. And it was such a success that community partners are going to fund the interns this summer. The Lakey Institute is going to fund housing. So it's a beautiful integration of funds where it takes time to build it in, but together we can breed together funds to create something bigger than a whole. And this

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: is also a service that our public schools do for UVM as well. Anybody's ever had an intern, it's not easy. And even with the best intern, because it is a thing, it's another thing. But I would say, because you're also all contemplating this issue of like, how do we grow our population? How do we recruit people to come to the state? How do we attract businesses? These kinds of things also support that. And we know that if you want to attract families, you also want to have these dynamic schools. We're going to skip that, that you put that in to embarrass me.

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: Just want to quickly We heard you all last time we were here when we presented on the return on investment of the community school coordinator, which is the unique position that many of our, and Beth Quimby is a fabulous community school coordinator here, that's the capacity builder, the linker of coordination of services with community partners and with their K-twelve partners. And so nationally, there's been a couple of studies to showcase for every $1 spent on the role of the community school coordinator, there was a return on that investment for $7.11 And so a group in New Mexico called the Apex Consulting Group did that study. And Peter and I and Jess tracked them down and said, Hey, you want to collaborate with us? We want to replicate that to your question. What would that look like in Vermont? So we're now finalizing sunsetting that eighteen month contract with them. And we have some preliminary data. So we piloted with three community school coordinators at North Country, White River Valley and at Hazen to look at their salary and benefits, right? Because the return on investment is benefits divided by costs, right? So you're trying to see what are the additional donations, volunteer hours in power would not be possible without the community school coordinator. Right. And so we're seeing that for every $1 for the coordinator, it's almost double the expenditure in terms of investment. And so we'll have a full report on that by the end of the month we have the final data coming in. But we're really excited about the findings because it does seem not only cost effective, but

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: a multiplying effect. And that's excluding we've named a couple of figures for you before. With New Mexico, think it was for every $1 it was an $8 return. And so I included this additional top data point, which is this is excluding the additional grant funds that we were able to attract by leveraging $1,000,000 of state investment. And as someone who sat shoulder to shoulder with folks in the field, that's $3,500,000 And I'm saying by FY '29 because some of these are multi year grants. But for $1,000,000 investment, dollars 3,500,000.0 brought into the system in order to support implementation and then move into that sustainability phase when we talk about implementation science. So, yeah, well, we should, but I just want to Again, this speaks directly to it. Karen Conroy, superintendent of St. John's Prairie Supervisory District, they're a cohort two, right? So this is first year and already they're seeing the results by engaging, adopting this program, engaging in this partnership, which they're calling C3P, Catamount Community Connections Program. C3P is definitely faster. But what they're saying is these efforts have allowed us to reduce wait times for mental health services. I think folks know in the Northeast Kingdom, you've taken testimony on this. There is a dearth. I mean, not just mental health is health, right? It's a maternity care desert in Essex County, but that they're able to respond proactively. But she's also pointing out that normally an out of district placement can cost up to $150,000 per student annually, but now they don't have to do that. And so they can start to ensure that students actually feel like they belong in school. Like every student gets to be in school, not just the students who can fit within the system of which we have the resources to serve them. I just I really appreciated her sharing that. These are more posts, we will bring this to an end. But I think I'd do a disservice to community school coordinator, Sam Stevens, who also just wanted to point out that, yes, there may be other systems that should be meeting some of these needs, but they're not right now. And so we're yes, 100% work on fixing that. But in the meantime, let's not withdraw the support because again, where kids come, where families come for help, they come to the school. And so we should resource them so that they can continue to meet those needs if and until some of our other service partners are ready to be in that position. So we should probably just end it here. We'll leave it here without saying anything.

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: So to invite you all, I know you're in session, but we're having a day of celebration, peer to peer sharing, uplifting the work at UVM on May 1. I believe you're all probably in this room, but for those that can get away for a little bit, we'd love it's free to register, free breakfast, free lunch, and we'll be having lots of What This, but from the folks on the ground doing work. So it's a privilege to be able to use their words and voices when they're not mine. So thank you for having us.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Great, really sort of lost track of the whole thing. I'd forgotten about the earmarks that have come in, and so it was really nice to hear about and continue to be just impressed and sort of fascinated by the partnership between all the entities, but to say that, all right, we're gonna collect information to see if this is actually doing what it's gonna do. So it's great. Thank you very much. Any other questions, committee, before we pick up Well,

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: more of a comment, and just that in a time when communities are worried about losing their small elementary schools, this would be a really good time to consider a big C, big S community school. We talk a lot about declining enrollment and declining enrollment opens up space. Space becomes available within the building and that space could be filled with what the community needs most. Maybe it's a senior center, maybe it's a daycare, maybe it's a place where kids can get dental health or physician health, whatever it is, but it seems like all of those things that a community needs if they were brought to the school, whereas you said, that's where families go for help, it would be a way to save those schools, a way for a community to think about saving their small school as we consider closing them around today. I would much rather see them turn into community schools than shutter.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: And I think what you'll also see, you, we won't go back to it, but that slide that has the grid of the number of students, school, etcetera, what you'll see is actually an extraordinary number of pre K are in those spaces. Knowing that pre K and childcare is also a challenge in this state, that's also something to think about as we move forward. We know that small investments can actually result in big savings, like in the grand scheme of things. And how we might Again, I've used this as an example, and again, it's not to attack early college, but that's a $4,000,000 appropriation that serves four ten kids. It's about $10,000 per student versus 2,500,000.0 surveying about 14,000 students. Math is just sort of incontrovertible when you think about addressing something systemically versus having funding individual programs. I want

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: the community schools approach. It makes the school a community asset and resource. To your point of co location of services in the school for everyone, the community and support of school. And I certainly think the community schools framework allows that to make the implicit explicit. So, yeah, that's an excellent point. Can you maybe just quickly give us a, like, just introduce community schools folks who are in the room?

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: Might have run this time to testify, but just for their coming.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: Would you just be willing to share the circus and chronic absenteeism data point that you just

[Grace (school leader; full name unknown)]: Yeah, absolutely. And I don't have the numbers right in front of me. Beth Quimby, Community Schools Coordinator has been able to participate in our school FNST teams and has been able to allow us to look chronic absenteeism in our building. So, we had a week long circus residency with Troy Wonderley. It's fantastic if you've ever had an opportunity to work with him. But we sat in our SST and our student support team and looked at data. We looked at the three weeks prior to the circuit, our cohort of students were considered chronically absent. It's about a third of our student population. That cohort group of their chronic absenteeism rate three weeks before the circus was thirteen point six eight percent for those three weeks. They attended the circus. The three weeks after the circus, we were at five point four three percent. So, we can't be certain that it was the circus that allowed that to happen, We believe deeply that the experience of having deep connection and belonging and multiple entry points and this big opportunity for students to experience something different allows them to want to come to school. So as a team working with Beth Quimby, we've been able to continue to think about connection and belonging in our building in new and different ways, and we want to continue to watch. We have some implementation practice that we're working on now, where we're working on building deeper senses of connection and belonging in our building to try to move that outcome marker that we're looking at is the chronic absenteeism rate. But a couple other anecdotal stories of watching that with individual students that it's pretty difficult.

[Jessica DeCarolis (former Vermont AOE; CCSC collaborator)]: And this might be from the state of Vermont, I think, went to adopting results based accountability. I think the legislature as well. We have another community. So do you want to introduce yourself? Sure.

[Beth Quimby (Community Schools Coordinator/Principal)]: I'm Beth You've seen me as the principal at Cabot and currently the principal at U32 Middle and High School and the Inc. Superintendent in OSSU. And so clearly, folks are deeply embedded in what I believe as both the leader and the possible member of this community.

[Grace (school leader; full name unknown)]: And I appreciate

[Beth Quimby (Community Schools Coordinator/Principal)]: listening and I hope that we can take action to this, so I think the

[Unidentified Committee Member (legislator)]: time are being introduced to Grace.

[Dr. Bernice Garnett (UVM Associate Professor; PI, Catamount Community Schools Collaborative)]: Thank

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: you. Thank you very much.