Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: You're live.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: Center of Education Committee back after just a two or three minute break after listening to a panel of teachers here in Cannon and we now have half an hour with the school board we'll introduce ourselves and then you can introduce yourselves as well obviously. I'm Seth Bongartz, I'm the chair of the Senate Education Committee, I live in Manchester.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale — Senate Majority Leader; Member, Senate Education Committee]: Kesha Ram Hinsdale, Senate Education and Senate Economic Development and Senate Majority Leader.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: And you live in?

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale — Senate Majority Leader; Member, Senate Education Committee]: Oh, Chittenden County. I don't want to say that up here, but I'm so glad to be with you.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: Senator Heffernan, I represent the Addison County District. I live in Bristol, Vermont. Terry Williams, I brought my district and this is my second time on the Maryland Education Committee proposal. You So probably know that you're the principal here, grew up in the town next to where I live, know his father. I used to assign him as principal at Arlington, so I'm to fund a meeting with her. So what we're doing is the mantra in which we're working is providing excellent educational opportunity for every Vermont child. And we're visiting five schools, five districts, we'd do more if we could, but we're doing five districts that we think are all kind of a little bit different. They're a small district, for instance, small school, and we're going all the way, we're lot of them in between the CVU, one of the largest high schools in Vermont, so we're trying to do and get a feel for what you are doing as teachers, school board, principal, community to provide that excellent educational opportunity for a child and the ways that it's being done differently in different settings, those kinds of things. So we're here, we're also here just to frankly just be sponges. And we've learned a lot from your kids this morning. That was really fabulous, and a lot from the teachers and the tour with Brian. And so now we want to spend a little bit of time with you and have you share concerns or tell us, you know, we just heard a lot about from students and the teachers about the attributes that come from being in a setting like we're the small school, tied to the community and all the things that you all know and I need to tell you, which you can do every day. We just want to kind of give you the floor, and so introduce yourselves and I don't have a specific question for you, other than just give us a sense of some of the things you would like us to know that we want to make sure we pick up from you before we leave at the end of the day today. I think it'd be helpful too to verify if you're Canaan School Board or ENS or Yes, any okay. So I don't know how to, know if you want to start or want to I'm

[Miles Nadeau — Chair, Essex North Supervisory Union and Northeast Kingdom Choice District]: Mike Nader, I'm the chair for the NSU and I'm also the chair for Northeast Kingdom Choice. Okay. And I'd like to thank you all for coming and I appreciate that you're trying to get a scope of the variety of your models. It's great. I guess I don't know how much you know about Choice, but I'll just go briefly into it. Choice was formed when Act forty six occurred and we combined with Kanan as we both were, they were K-twelve operational, we were K-twelve non operational, so that was what we ended up joining live. And we've had a good partnership over the years, there's been some ups and downs with different things, but we've done a good job. And with choice, we've had choice, I come from Curtin, we've had choice for a long time, and it's been very beneficial for a variety of educational needs for kids in town. And I think when we joined with the other towns that were non operational north of us, East Haven came into that and we have towns all the way up through. It's been a good thing because I think one, it's given them a good voice because as an individual small amount of students, tended to run into problems and not have much opportunity to deal with those. So when we formed, we ended up being about 300, we been over 300, just under 300 kids, our tuition now. And it's given us a good place to operate from for our kids and to represent. And I think it's been good to be with Canaan. I think we shared, we've learned a lot working with them, but I think it's also helped them with their isolation in some ways that there's more support to help provide for the administrative costs and things that go along with that. It's been, I'd say it's been a pretty successful partnership all in all. I guess the only things I would want to address is that if things were to shift quite dramatically, it would be a lot of hardship right now that I heard conversations about this community in Canaan and how they provide for their students. You start moving down the Connecticut River Valley, going down the road there, and you've got a separation from Canaan, have a separation from any other schools in that area. The one thing that's always been pretty important is that we've had the opportunity for those towns to choose to go to a school right across the river, which is 10 miles or less. So that's been an important point that we wanted to try to keep in consideration that I know in our forum, won't take too much longer. In our forum we had parents that came that live in Guildhall which is across from Lancaster pretty much. They cannot see if they were to lose that opportunity to go with the children to the schools across the River, they would have an option going to St. Johnsbury or Lindenville or further much further north and they're likely to be totally changed totally shifted so that kind of came up and I think it's important for us to try to keep that but anyway.

[Sharon Ellenwood — Board Member, Northeast Kingdom Choice District]: Sharon Ellenwood I'm going to just briefly talk to my other room, but having choice in this area is a lifeline for families, because in a town with nothing, with 87 people in it, with no sidewalks and no businesses or anything. The lifeline is where the jobs are, where the grandparents are, where the daycare is, and I live in the neighboring town of Canaan, and our students choose Canaan three to one, which speaks to the excellence of this school. The other one, the one in the three to one, crossed the river into New Hampshire because they may live a mile from the school and they don't have, buying snow tires, where the pediatrician is, particularly if there's a health issue, is mandatory for the NDK Choice District, and as Miles said, when we came together in our Act 46 works, we did some fiscal work with ENSU to combine administrative expenses and reduce Kainan's expenses, reduce our expenses by sharing a central office. We did fiscal work and we did equity work, because we took 10 of the most remote,

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: I don't have to tell you

[Sharon Ellenwood — Board Member, Northeast Kingdom Choice District]: what geographic isolation is, because you drove it this morning, but we took those towns with no voice, 30 people in a town, and we've got 10 of them together, we've got this really nice voice. I think that putting those 10 towns together has advocated for neighbors that are in the same shoes. Fiscally and quality wise, we've done great work together. I think it was so tickled you here.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: So do the kids from Canaan have to come here or can they go, the kids from Canaan have to come here, all the other kids are home choice.

[Sharon Ellenwood — Board Member, Northeast Kingdom Choice District]: And I'm watching operating and non operating budgets and for an operating school to have to cart everything out, I've watched it in this district, it's very difficult. Having to cut buses and transportation when health insurance is skyrocketing and the children lose kids.

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: Thank you. Still one with the name? You were there.

[Miles Nadeau — Chair, Essex North Supervisory Union and Northeast Kingdom Choice District]: Was a three year project here that tried to start a cooperative to look to form something similar to Waterford between the towns on the other side of the river in Canaan. There was actually an exchange, correct me.

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: That's what I was gonna talk about, then There's your segue, Michael. Because we hear it a lot, so my name is Renee Marchesha, and I'm the chair here of the Canaan School Board. One thing we hear a lot, a lot, we hear it in public forum, we hear it every year at town meeting is as Miles said we were in the Connecticut Collaborative, yep, Connecticut River Collaborative where we were trying to form an interstate school district. They did a lot of work, was not on that committee, Sharon was, they put a lot of work in and during that time we had the ability to swap students. Were like, so we would send kids across the river and they would take classes there and same we were coming here and when we when that folded and we found out that that was not something we could be doing it ended abruptly and we had a lot of people very upset that we couldn't do that and we have what three schools within how many miles of each other? Three high schools within how much?

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: It's 12 miles. Within 12 miles. Two

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: of our New Hampshire ones here. They're all facing you know the same challenges you know, with declining enrollment and, you know, we do swap teachers, we are able to, you know, do a little bit of that, but the kids and the parents really miss being able to do what we were doing as far as taking classes and such. And that was a state statute that Vermont created, is that what we heard? We were told, yes. And does anybody know what that state statute is? I don't, it was said funding cannot cross the river if you have an operating, if you have an operating district, I believe that the funding cannot go out of state, and Canaan does have an operating district. When we had an official interstate compact exploratory committee, so we were allowing it to explore it, because everybody had an appetite for it, But at this time, SAU seven in New Hampshire does not have an appetite for an interstate school district. Who

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale — Senate Majority Leader; Member, Senate Education Committee]: does not have an appetite for it? Is that accurate, my I don't know. The New Hampshire District. Okay only because we have one interstate operating district the White River is oh okay Rivendell Rivendell and Dresden. Okay but it so if we allowed for that conversation you still think New Hampshire is then

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: coming to Knowing the that New Hampshire is also exploring Gonzales meeting, that may change. Okay.

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: And I think regardless of what, like we're not, sorry, I'm Raelene Beegan, I am the vice chair for both the board and

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: the E and S.

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: Statute change allowed us to not share the resources. So even if there wasn't an interstate district, they weren't open to that. I do think they're open to sharing. Like if there was a change in statute that allowed us to use this community in its entirety without the river as the barrier, I do think that there's conversations that can be had there.

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: For sure.

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: And those students are still able to come here. So they are coming here and taking our, I mean, with tuition now you know we are charging them tuition before that we were swapping them you know without that but you know they are still some coming here but that is dwindling you know

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: And we do share sports.

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: We heard a lot about So

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: how many students, I think we heard this this morning, how many students come from any K- Choice tuition here, and the same from New Hampshire having kids tuition? Those numbers, not sure.

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: I believe there are about 22 that come mainly from Norton, Norton, Lemington, Bloomfield, and possibly Brunswick. At times there are Brunswick students, I don't think there are That's any like 22

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: out of, I think you said 300?

[Miles Nadeau — Chair, Essex North Supervisory Union and Northeast Kingdom Choice District]: Veras, yeah.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: 22 out of 300 come to Canaan.

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: 300 is the number of the total students in any K choice. Yeah.

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: Probably another eight to 10.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: Okay.

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: Most some of those come from Swartz Summer, but a

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale — Senate Majority Leader; Member, Senate Education Committee]: lot come for the afternoons for the students.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: Between the two it's a significant portion of your enrollment tuition's in. Yep, okay. So, why don't you go and make sure we stay on the clock here.

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: So I really began, I don't necessarily agree with this stuff, so I tried to gather my thoughts ahead of time,

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: and if it's going to read, is.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: That's okay.

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: I'll do my best. I think

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: the essence of what I'm trying to, or what I would like to say to you guys is how important it is that whatever methods we're investing in and preserving these educational infrastructures in our rural areas, I think that I have like a personal analogy where a business partner and I, which is my brother, invested in a mobile home park in New Hampshire that was set to be abandoned. And 16 families were losing their homes. They had a water system that had never been tested by the state. They had barely erode through it. And it was they had been told they had to find a way to move their homes. I sat there for twenty, thirty, forty years. And we gotten into it not necessarily as a great business opportunity, but because of the sense of community. And it's not just the homes that are there, it's their lives and their histories. And I think that working with that, and it's hours and hours and hours of, you know, I came here this morning from crawling under an elderly disabled couple's home and trying to heat the up their lines for them at no cost because there's no other way to do it. And it's not about just repair. It's like, you know, it's their dignity, it's their well-being, and the community's integrity as a whole. And I think that this connects directly to our educational landscape in Vermont, where in rural areas, the schools aren't just a school, it's the heart of the community. And you know, we have to fear that our school might close or consolidate or, you know, the penalties that are in place, in theory, to help equalize education penalize us because we don't have enough students to cover the bare costs even when our teachers are doing five different things and our administration are filling every gap that they can. It's really like a palpable

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: concern. And I

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: think that like our kids learn not just education here, but they learn a lot of other values. I mean, our kids, they do everything. They're doing their sports and their health and well-being, but they're doing community service and they learn resiliency. And so I think as much as, you know, centralizing or things like that can be a big concern for, you know, you think about like the long bus ride that your kid's on and then they can't do all these other after school activities, but it's more than just that. It's also like an erosion of our community identity and our values and our support networks. I really think that it's important to focus the bigger picture on preserving a lot of those values and really looking at the needs and realities for these small communities as well. And I just think that our investment in this education should really mirror our investments in the communities themselves, fostering the environments where every kid and family can thrive without fearing community integration. So I'm really grateful that you guys are here and hearing everything that we have to say and our administration earlier and our community after this, but I think that that is my contribution. I hope that these voices can really be amplified and heard at a bigger level because what these people have to say are really important.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: That was very powerful I didn't catch your first name.

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: Raeleen, r a e l e m e.

[Kristi Vegan — Canaan School Board Member]: I'm Kristi Vegan, I'm Raeleen's sister-in-law. It's my first year on the school board, I've learned a lot. I'm still learning. I don't have much to say. But I can say that us as a community, we come together in every aspect. I mean, you have teachers that our after school program has been amazingly successful. Our students are loving it. We see more enrollment in that. Our CTE programs are at the best that they can be given the budget cuts that we've had to do the last couple of years. And when we have to do those based on the funding that we get because of all of these guidelines that we have to follow, our students do suffer. They are not able to have certain things or they have to go elsewhere to get them, and then we're responsible for that.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: Did your funding cuts have really come about because of the excess spending threshold?

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: Some of them have certainly been. Some of them, yeah. Absolutely.

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: And health insurance. And the

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: health insurance costs. But, yeah.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: Okay.

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: Some of

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: them are definitely driven by that. It's been a huge hit, last year's budget was $200,000

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: You had to cut and No, extend

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: we didn't, that we had to

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: pay in excess because we were over the threshold. And that was after cutting the budget. And that

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: was along with cutting

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: the budget, getting it to

[Kristi Vegan — Canaan School Board Member]: the five, around 5%.

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: I can't remember what the percentage was. We were still 200,000 over the threshold that point. That's what we had

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: to pay in addition. And that's hard.

[Kristi Vegan — Canaan School Board Member]: I mean, you you look at what we did cut, who knows what we may have to cut this year just to meet those and not try to go above what we need to go above. And I think that that's where the biggest struggle is. It's the money. It's being able to give all of these students and this staff a job, a place to have a really great developing community. And by losing all of that, you're hurting these students, you're hurting administration, your people are making it so that these families have to end up leaving the area because they no longer have a job anymore and they have to go find it elsewhere. I love this community. I moved up here ten years ago. All four of my kids now come here. My husband graduated from here. I plan to stay here and build a business with our family that we have. But it's something that we have to think about in the long run. You know, what are these kids going to have to lose out on in the future if things don't change and we don't see how a small close knit community like this ends up losing out on?

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: Oh, this is a hard act to follow. All of you. My name is Terry Hur, I'm a school board member of Keenan. Recently Keenan was highlighted on WCAX TV and for you know they go every it's a different town. You're

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: going to be back on the news. The

[Terry Hur — Canaan School Board Member]: essence of the whole thing what it boiled down to was family that the community is a family a family unit and so with that as all families you've got some you know bad days and good days and but really when it comes down to the end of the day we're all united together and my concern I said it earlier to you before this started we know more about New Hampshire than we do Vermont because we're so geographically isolated and I just my concern I mean both my children went to school here as I did and what happens I mean I can't even conceive having kids being bused an hour away twice a day you they would lose everything that they have here a sense of community, a sense of school pride, town pride. Mean, all these things are investments that you want to have so that they come back to keep your whole town alive and thriving and you just if there's going to be this disconnect well that's going to be gone

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: I'm Marcia Vanderwolk I'm on Cayman School Board and the ENSU School Board. I was also with Miles on the working group with North Country and Orleans Central to talk about redistricting and cooperating all that stuff. I've been active with the Redistricting Task Force. My children all went to school here. I have all sons. So Renee was the sister to one of my sons and he still comes to see her every time he comes home. He just retired from being the STEM director for the Department of Education in Massachusetts. That's a Canaan graduate. Another one of my sons was a principal, he went back to teaching in Addison Central. My third son is an architect. So you can go to and do important things in the world and you can stay here and build a community here. I moved to Cayman originally almost fifty years ago because I was married to a Vermonter and when I say Vermonter I mean Vermonter. It's like way, way, way back. But I was from New Hampshire and here was where you could be in both states at once. And he even once said, it's so nice over there. I could live there. Yeah, a mile away but you throw a rock to it. But what I wanted to say today is, so I taught college for most of my career but I've also been a classroom teacher and I retired as a classroom teacher and my last year, no my next to last year of teaching was during COVID but we were sharing resources with the schools across the river and my upper level math classes, I was teaching in Pittsburgh, New Hampshire but my upper level math classes had Canaan students in them and so being able to share those resources I mean it doesn't make sense. Mean as much as we love our friends at North Country and Orleans Central it's just too far away and the latest map that had us merging with them somehow not merging schools but merging district eventually we would get merged because we would have no voice. We would be 170 students to their almost 4,000. Maybe we would get one seat on a combined school group. You know it doesn't make sense for us. Our community is here. Know our store is over there. Our doctors are over there. Our community is here. So being able to share resources with the New Hampshire schools whether we form a district or not is really important. We already share resources. We have shared more in the past and but certainly share more in the future and that's what makes sense for us. The other thing I want to say is like I said I taught during COVID it's been crazy the last five years in school. It wasn't just one year of COVID. We spent, well we only shut down for one spring term, the next two years you know, half the class would be sick, you know. So the teachers were trying to teach remotely and in class at the same time. It was crazy. The kids who started school five years ago are now in middle school. They are looking to where they're going to high school and what high school is going to be like. They have known nothing but chaos And to give them more chaos is just crazy. You know, the problem is the tax structure in the state of Vermont. The problem is taxes. We have because of the area of our district our assessed value per child is very high because there's so much land and so few people but property values individually are very low. Know I can't sell my house for $400,000 you know it's just you just can't it's more like 150,000 and you know so this is a poor community even though know at vapor we look rich.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: And

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: so we keep getting hit. We keep getting hit over and over. We have had to cut you know we had four vibrant CTE programs. We're down to two and a half. Know Todd said to me not too long ago, I'm going lose fire. What we need in CTE is construction and health services and those are the programs we cut. It's just it's crazy. Our trades program we own a house in Goldberg, New Hampshire that our kids have been working at for years but there's no time now and there's no money and the other craziness, the other chaos is federal funding. We don't know what money we're going to get. We don't know if we're going to get anything at all. So while there's chaos at the federal level, there's chaos at the state level, there's chaos everywhere. Don't add more. Just go with the task force's recommendation of shared services. We're happy to share services with North Country. We're happy to share services with SAU seventy and the more we're allowed to do that and you know there's no way to keep the school open if we keep getting nailed with health insurance and with everything else. I don't know why the state of Vermont doesn't self insure between state employees, all the teachers, all the municipal employees there should be enough people to self insure. Stop giving all our money to Blue Cross Blue Shield at 15% increases everywhere.

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: We, I think need to be Oh, gym. In the gym.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale — Senate Majority Leader; Member, Senate Education Committee]: Oh, I was like, wow. Nobody wants to have a pop up until Yeah.

[Renee Marchesha — Chair, Canaan School Board]: Are people

[Seth Bongartz — Chair, Senate Education Committee]: out there, you know? They've been back. Oh, again. Pretty steady. So, by the way, you can also take a link there as well and

[Marcia Vanderwolk — Member, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: add in whatever needs

[Raelene Beegan — Vice Chair, Canaan School Board and ENSU Board]: to