Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Just waiting to go live.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: You're live. Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We are live. This is the Senate Education Committee at the Woodstock High School, on November 11 I'm sorry, 11/18/2025. I'm Seth Bongartz, the chair of the Senate Education Committee, and just for a little bit of context, we tried during the last session to get the committee out to some schools, and it's impossible. Once we're in session, it's impossible. We couldn't get to the Montpelier High School that we could see out the window because there's just no time. So we're using this time before the session starts to get out and visit some schools. And what we're trying to do before we introduce the committee is we're trying to, as a committee, think about the challenges and the opportunities and what schools are doing in different settings around Vermont to meet the goal of, and I at least like to talk about it as providing excellent educational opportunities for every Vermont child. And we have different obstacles to that in different parts of the state and different opportunities, and schools are doing it differently, and I find all that both fascinating and really critical for us to understand. So we're here today at Woodstock for our second of five visits. And really, if we are anything today, we are sponges. We're just here to learn as much as we can about the way that you're achieving that goal, both the challenges and the things that you're doing and the opportunities that you see ahead, to help us be as well informed as you can possibly be as we go back to Montpelier this January and pick up our work where we left off. With that, we'll introduce the committee. On my left is our Vice Chair.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: David Weeks, I live in Procter, representing Rutland County. Hi everybody, I'm

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Nader Hashim, I'm a Senator from Windham County.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Good morning everybody, Terry Williams, I live in Pultney and I'm from Rutland District.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Good morning, Heffernan. I'm from the Addison County District.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'm neglected to say that I represent the Bennington Center District, which includes Bennington County and a few towns from Windham. I saw Charlie Kimball come in, since he's here, we'll introduce Charlie Kimball, the rep from Woodstock, actually. Charlie Kimball, state rep for what, Windsor five, you have the stock running in front of So, I know that you have really put a lot of time and effort into thinking about this day, and some of me, and so forth the committee, but so at this point, we're turning the I think we're going

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: to do you're going to

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: be introduced to your district. So, Ron.

[Kerry Bristow (School Board Chair, Mountain Views SD/Union Board)]: Good morning. My name is Kerry Bristow and I'm on the school board, but separate and apart from that I taught in this building for thirty nine years, teaching first French, then Spanish, and then joined the school board during the pandemic when I was recruited for whatever reason, somehow finding myself to be the board chair, which I did not aspire to be. However, that's who I am, and I want to say to you, thank you so much for coming here today. We really appreciate you understanding better the education in our schools, all of our schools. We represent seven towns and then an eighth choice town that mostly sends their students to us, small towns and bigger towns. And I'm very proud of the education in this district. For the thirty nine years that I taught here, I always felt as though we were getting close to being really great, and I think that currently the state of education in this district is excellent. The test scores from the state show that to us, and it's amazing what has happened in the last few years around literacy, math, and science education, along with the other disciplines that are taught in the district. You'll find that we're a very high performing district. You're

[Kelly Jean (Teacher, Prosper Valley School)]: going

[Kerry Bristow (School Board Chair, Mountain Views SD/Union Board)]: to hear from students today, teachers, parents, and community members. You will see the state of our building this afternoon and understand why we're furiously trying to get ourselves a bond to build a new school here. And I just want to say as well that Act 46 was very difficult across our state. It was a very difficult year and we were already working together as somewhat of a district. And it took a long time, but in the end we are stronger, we are better, we have a lot of merged functions and I think that ultimately we, yielded to a strong functional and collaborative team. So thank you for your time and interest in Mountain View's Supervisor Union. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: Good morning. My name is Sherry Souza. I'm the proud superintendent of Mountain View Supervisory Union and educator in this district for now thirty two years. I want to begin with we are MVSU. So we are five elementary schools. We have a commitment to full time public pre K, and we have pre K classrooms in Barnard, Killington, Reading, Woodstock with over 100 pre K students. We have one middle and high school that you're sitting in right now. We have and have maintained approximately 1,000 students in our SU. We have two fifty faculty and staff, and we are one of the largest employers in this region. We are building a strong foundation. We are above the Vermont State averages for proficiency in literacy, math, and science, and we are a community of learners centered on students, family, educator, and community relationships. So our communities and schools include: Barnard Academy, Killington Elementary, Prosper Valley School, Reading Elementary, Woodstock Elementary, and Woodstock Union Middle and High Schools. You'll now hear from teachers and students from each of those elementary schools.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: Hello, my name is Melissa Zorheide. I'm the principal at Barnard Academy. And we are so happy that you've taken this time to listen to us today. Our school is preschool through sixth grade, and it's really the heart of our town community. Our students feel at home and form really strong relationships with each other. Was at a meeting with parents last night, and one of our new families said that her three year old daughter comes home every day and just can't stop talking about how the big kids are so nice to me. And that's just a really nice example of how the trust in our school is really strong within the relationships with with parents. And I'm here not to be the person who does most of the talking, we're just going to have a few things that one of my teachers and two of our students want to share about our school. Our first student is Phoebe Feeney, and she is a sixth grade student who joined in just the last couple of years with her four younger siblings. And so she's going to share a little bit and then Hannah Wheeler, a sixth grader who's been in our school for since she was in preschool, and our fifth and sixth grade teacher who is their teacher. He also is going to share so thank you so much.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: How many how many students in the school?

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: Oh 65 students and we're all multi grade classrooms. So we have four classrooms and it fluctuates our numbers fluctuate year to year pretty dramatically because of how many students go out and how many students come in at the preschool level. We, we have some very small classes, they're combined so that there's a bigger classroom. Our smallest class is only three students, but then we have 15 students and they come together, their classroom is 22 students combined. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: thank you.

[Speaker 8.0]: Yeah. So as she said, I'm greedy. And I think that the best part about Barnard Academy is that we have, like, a sense of community, and we're on the smaller side of schools. And so the teachers can focus on, like, the kids that need more help. I came from Rhode Island, and we had a big school. So the teachers if somebody was struggling, the teachers would assume that everybody was struggling. So then we had to go over and over and then the kids who like had it down had to like run it over and we were kind of slow. And yeah, that's fine.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Mary Guggenheimberger (Principal, Killington Elementary School)]: I'm Hannah, and I've been

[Hannah Wheeler (Student, Barnard Academy)]: a student at Barnard for eight years, and the school has, like, really big opportunities to be leaders now that I'm in sixth grade. And, like, you could, like, plan field trips and, like, school celebrations, and it's just really been, like, a really fun eight years.

[Aaron Boucher (5th–6th Grade Teacher, Barnard Academy)]: Aaron Boucher, teach fifth and sixth grade at Barnard. I think both these students spoke about the sense of community that we that we feel at Barnard. I believe every student feels welcome and supported in the work that we do there. Just as a quick anecdote, I was talking to a parent the other day who had to take her student out for a dentist appointment and it's, you know, looking like they were going to get back with maybe an hour left in school. And she asked the student,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: well, do you want to go back

[Aaron Boucher (5th–6th Grade Teacher, Barnard Academy)]: to school? Or you want to just come home? And he said, I want to go back to school, I want to be there, I don't want to miss anything. And I say that not because it's surprising or shocking to me, but because I think that's the standard that we maintain at Barnard is that every student feels supported, and every student wants to be there. And I've worked at schools before where we struggle with things like absenteeism and truancy. And we ask ourselves like, what else could we be doing different here? And think it's a it's, it's a tough question. And I don't know that it warrants an easy answer. It takes a lot of takes a lot of work, I can point to a lot of things that we're doing right at Barnard, I can say we have a super involved parent organization, the Barnard Bees. I can say we have a devoted teaching staff that's constantly trying to elevate their their teaching. I can say we have a supportive administrative staff. Our whole faculty and staff is super supportive. And we have really great, kind, thoughtful kids at Barnard. And so, to all of that, I think it's just, it's difficult, it's difficult to replicate those things. It's something that's built up over time, but not something that happens by by accident. It's a lot of people just doing the very best that they can for these for these kids. And I'm really glad to be a part of it. And I appreciate the time that you've all taken care today to hear from us. Thank you very much. Thank you for that question.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: So you teach fifth and sixth, is there any downfalls for having fifth and sixth that you run into? Or is it pretty pretty smooth that actually it helps the fifth graders?

[Rafael Adamek (Director of Technology & Innovation, MVSU)]: I think in a lot

[Aaron Boucher (5th–6th Grade Teacher, Barnard Academy)]: of ways it it does help to have those the sixth grade by the time our students in sixth are in sixth grade, I really feel like they're getting that sense of leadership of being an example for the rest of the school. So I think they really do help those fifth graders. When it comes to things like balancing the math curriculum, we've come up with some very creative fixes. For example, I teach, I teach exclusively the fifth graders in math while the sixth graders go to Spanish, and then we switch so that I'm able to give both classes the amount of time that they that they need within, you know, within each discipline. So I think that having having that small school has has led to some creative problem solving.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Thank you. Yeah, so important. So you're you've got four classrooms. And so you're multi class classrooms. Yes. Can you give

[Aaron Boucher (5th–6th Grade Teacher, Barnard Academy)]: me a sense of the maybe the how the older next grade students work to help maybe mentor? Yeah, absolutely. So the fifth and sixth grade students have taken time to join the kindergarten and preschool classrooms in, in reading to those to those students. In the past, we've established kind of a buddy system where students that are new to the school can have a mentor older student who stays with them who kind of shows them the ropes and goes over just like different things about the school that they that they need to know. So I really think that that's also part of the part of the community. And so many students have older siblings and just kids that they look up to in general that help to build that.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I think Phoebe kind of alluded to that. She really enjoys that part of where she came from a bigger school and she didn't have that sense of community.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

[Mary Guggenheimberger (Principal, Killington Elementary School)]: Good morning. My name is Mary Guggenheimberger, I'm the principal at Killington Elementary School, and I feel so fortunate that we're able to share all the wonderful things about all of our schools here today with you, and if you've ever been to Killington, know that Killington is basically a five mile road up to the top of the ski resort. There's no like town center, but our school is really considered the town center of Killington and I'm going to introduce some people to tell you a little bit more about it.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: This is Nora Louie she's in

[Mary Guggenheimberger (Principal, Killington Elementary School)]: sixth grade at Killington and her teacher in science a different sixth grade teacher.

[Speaker 8.0]: Hi I'm Nora Rutland District School. I'm here to tell you what KES three special. In sixth grade, we have leadership privileges like play like great plays and holiday plays that we put on for students and parents, and we run a haunted house every year. This year, we ran a haunted house in the high community community. It's a fun tradition.

[Nora (Student, Killington Elementary School)]: We also do big family where we can do fun projects like building, like, little country cars, contesting on the down ramp to see how far they get. We also made obstacle courses of chocolate. Could you also decide, like, we learn about solar wind power and experiment experimented with how many bolts it could use. This year, we had a solar program where we partnered up with someone to make an invention of solar panels. Some people made a solar car or boat. Last year, fifth grade, they went to Starbase and built rockets and morphed them and programmed cars. We also did we also did stewardship on a venture trial by raking it and lining it with logs so people would not get lost. Delta dug out with Stella and found artifacts like coal and bricks. In fourth grade, we used the nature trail for sugar, and it's privilege it's a privilege that fourth graders have have. And we went into our sugar shack in Boyle's test, and we each got to take a half a point cold. We also have a music program where all students can fly an instrument like steel drums, recorders, group markers, ukuleles, and more. We're also a band in jazz band where kids can learn to play instruments beyond those we do need to class. I love KES because of all those things.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: You. You're very good.

[Nora (Student, Killington Elementary School)]: Thank you. Great job, Nora.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: She hit on a lot

[Amy Simons (6th Grade Teacher, Killington Elementary School)]: of wonderful points about how we have a very rigorous math and science program, great instrument in Unified Arts program. My name is Amy Simons. I am the sixth grade teacher at Killam Elementary School. I have been incredibly grateful to be in this district for twenty three years. Very grateful and blessed to be at Killeen Elementary School for twenty three years and in this district. So I teach sixth grade so I can attest to the fact that we're a very cohesive supervisory union, very cohesive district and we've all gone through the same professional development together so that for math and for science and for literacy so that when all of our kids do meet up at this location they are very well prepared for middle school and high school so again very grateful to be here. Nora touched a lot about science and math and our nature trail and stewardship programs. As Mary, our principal Hinsdale, really the hub of our community. It's really the heart and soul of the Killington community. The sixth graders just put on a haunted house at the KPN, the Killington Pico Area Association, invited the whole community, it was a wonderful event. The second and third grader is going to be doing a holiday store in a few weeks, and we have parents that come in from ten-twenty years ago and drop off their stuff to sell. Do sugaring in fourth grade. Have former parents come in and community members that come in and boil the sap with the kids. Those are just a few examples.

[Speaker 8.0]: Am grateful to be in

[Amy Simons (6th Grade Teacher, Killington Elementary School)]: this district and at Chittenden. Thank you. Thank you for your time.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. And then we're going hear a little bit more about this, but maybe one of you talk to us about either one of you the work you're doing in literacy to prepare kids for high school?

[Speaker 8.0]: Sure. Think, yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's unified across the I know it's a theme, so I just wanted to

[Mary Guggenheimberger (Principal, Killington Elementary School)]: hear Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: From one of the schools, just wanted to hear a little bit about.

[Mary Guggenheimberger (Principal, Killington Elementary School)]: Yeah so we are implementing a brand new program it was piloted last year it's called EL it's very rigorous the amount of time that each classroom has to spend on it we are committed to for example K through three are spending one hundred and twenty minutes a day on just literacy projects, reading and writing, and then word study on top of that. Then grades four through six, their minimum time that they spend is, I think it's sixty minutes of reading, and along with word study and fluency and just a volume of reading, which this is in every single one of our elementary schools. So when they come to Woodstock Middle School, of the K-six students have had this program and they're all entering pretty much on the same page.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And how many of the kids at Killington?

[Mary Guggenheimberger (Principal, Killington Elementary School)]: We're 112,

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: pre K-six. Okay.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Thank you. Thank you.

[Devin Workman (Principal, Prosper Valley School; Director of Summer SOAK)]: Hi there, I'm Devin Workman. I'm the principal at the Prosper Valley School. I'm very proud to have been able to wear a lot of hats across the valley school. I started as a paraprofessional years ago, moved into be a first grade teacher there was a special educator there for a number of years and then now have the opportunity to be the leader of that school. We're fifth and sixth grade only. We have six homerooms this year. And today to speak to about 110 kids. And today to speak more about Prussia Valley, I have Levon Stallard, a sixth grade student at Prussia Valley and his teacher Miss Kelly Jean.

[Levon Stallard (Student, Prosper Valley School)]: Good morning, my name is Lippon Stallon. I'm a sixth grader at the Prosper Valley School. I'm here to talk about my experience at school. Here at Prosper Valley, we have many unique amazing things. We have a ropes course inside and outside. The ropes courses help me and my classmates learn about teamwork. They're also great for exercise. My favorite memory from this school is probably sugary. In fifth grade, we got to collect sab and make maple syrup at our very own sugar sab. That was extremely fun and I would definitely like to do it again. At our school from time to time we go on hikes. On our hikes we write poetry about our surroundings and we learn about nature. We also have an observatory at our school. This observatory helps us learn about the universe around us. In my day, I do projects with extremely helpful teachers who show us how to learn. I'm very grateful to go to this school and our Prosper Valley community would probably agree with me too. That's all I have. Can

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I ask

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you a question?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: What's your favorite class?

[Levon Stallard (Student, Prosper Valley School)]: Probably, well, SPW. Music.

[Kelly Jean (Teacher, Prosper Valley School)]: Hello, good morning. My name is Kelly Jean. I'm an educator of seventeen years. And this is my second year with the district. I've been in lots of different places. And I am so completely honored to be a part of this community here. I hope to have all my years in education finishing out here at this district. At the Prosper Valley School, our motto is challenging the mind, encouraging the heart. And that's really the foundation and the lens of all of our decision making as educators. And I think what that kind of boils down to is this very high level of engagement with both like the whole child, the mind, the heart, what they want, what they're curious about. At our core of our practice is a very deep immersive learning experience grounded in community, place, and skill building. We support all students through very robust whole group curriculum, as what was said with EL, and as well just really thinking about what the kids are interested in and how we can support them as they grow within our community as community members and as citizens. Along with that, we have very flexible small groups, that change throughout our trimesters and our years to really give students exactly what they need through multi tiered systems of support for both reading, math, and also behavior as well, and that sort of social emotional piece. At TPS, we always strive for a strength based approach, looking to see how students can be the most successful with their strengths and how we can help them grow. And I really think that this leads to an amazing amount of confidence and self awareness, self reflection. We do a lot of like rubrics and thinking about our learning, sort of that metacognition that was mentioned, like really learning about how we learn. And through the teaching staff, we really try to provide like many pathways, many avenues for that grade level, success and mastery. I really want to swing back to that engagement piece. One thing that we really do well at the Prosper Valley School is our celebrations of learning, where we bring the community in and the students become the teachers, and they teach their parents, they teach their families, they teach the fifth graders. Speaking of like from sixth to fifth and fifth to sixth, they teach each other what they've been learning. And the joy and the engagement that you see in those celebrations of learning are like, I have chills. Like that's why we do this. Those are the big light bulb moments. They are so proud of what they do. And I really think a lot of that comes back to the teachers as well. Every single day, I'm so honored to be a part of this teaching staff, because we bring joy and passion for what we do, and that directly affects the engagement in every discussion, every lesson, every celebration that we have.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: So thank you so much.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Go ahead. Go ahead. Question? Yeah. Just to make sure we understand this, five and six schools are a little bit different than you normally get, and so tell us about, are you the school that, are there some smaller schools that only go to four and

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: that you have kids? Yes. How many

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: schools do you take kids from and then before they come to each other?

[Kelly Jean (Teacher, Prosper Valley School)]: Yeah. So we have students from Reading, from West, from Woodstock, and then also because of school choice, we can have students from Barnard or Killington as well, but most of our students are coming from Reading and West. And so it's just this beautiful little like nest for these students where they can really grow their confidence, grow their skills so that they're fully ready for middle school, like a bigger school experience. So this year we have three classes of fifth grade and three classes of sixth grade.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: How many kids?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: I think altogether we would 110.

[Devin Workman (Principal, Prosper Valley School; Director of Summer SOAK)]: Yeah.

[Kelly Jean (Teacher, Prosper Valley School)]: I have 17. Usually, I think they're about that, around 17 to 18.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: Yeah.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. Yes. So can

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: you give me maybe this is a better question for your superintendents, some kind of a sense of how the distance between your all your schools. I'm on the western part of the state and I I understand I hear Reading. I know I know the name of the town, but I I don't know where it is.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: I'm not sure the distance between Reading and

[Kelly Jean (Teacher, Prosper Valley School)]: the Prosper Valley School. Know I drive by Barnard.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: At least a lot

[Kelly Jean (Teacher, Prosper Valley School)]: of the schools like around Woodstock are pretty close.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Okay.

[Kelly Jean (Teacher, Prosper Valley School)]: It takes about five minutes from from Prosper to Woodstock, probably ten minutes between, Prosper and Barnard.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So it's not an all in half bus trip to get to any of these schools?

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: I think Killington and Reading.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: 2.2 miles from Reading and Prosper Valley.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: One more question. Well, actually questions for Sherry, superintendent. So the concept of school choice was just brought up. I'm wondering if you can give an overview of, obviously everybody's funneled into the middle school and high school here. Can you give a sense of school choice for the elementary and middle school?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: We have inter district choice as part of our Act 46 merger. One of the things that individual plans asked for is that parents could self select what school elementary school they want to enroll in and so it makes sense if you're in Bridgewater which is halfway between Woodstock Elementary and Killington Elementary families that's been a decision they can make Parents from Plymouth, they have an identified school as Woodstock Elementary School, but they could choose to Reading. And so parents choose for different reasons, and so we have, you know, test students here and there funneling into Woodstock Elementary School, Pre K four, majority. And so at Proctor Valley Schools, have students from Padraig, Reading, Woodstock, Bridgewater, Sunfield, Barnard. So it really is an inter district school. Parents may choose them, I really want for my child the pre k six experience which we offer at Barnard and Killington. So as a Merge District, if you live within our seven towns, you can do inter district choice. Once you make that selection you commit to that selection and that's reviewed by me as the superintendent Amy.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay thank you.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: You're welcome.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: On that

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: transportation for somebody that's the furthest distance away Is it usually up to the parent to get them to school and back from school or is there a bus system?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: So, introduce your choice. So, if a student is within our bus route and they can access the bus route to go to a school, they can use that bus route. We will not provide additional transportation. So if you're in Killington and you want to attend Procter Valley School, then that's up to the parent. If you're in Bridgewater and we have a bus route, you can access our existing bus route.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You're welcome.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: Good morning, I'm Amanda Rake. I'm the interim principal and teacher at Reading Elementary School. We have 35 students. So we're the smallest at Mountain View Supervisory Union, but we truly believe that our size is our strength. So we're pre k through fourth grade.

[Amanda Rake (Interim Principal/Teacher, Reading Elementary School)]: All of our classrooms are multi age, multi grade. I brought two of our fourth grade students. I have Zoe, Marletta, Naomi, Emily, and I threw this idea to them yesterday. We sat to them over lunch and they prepared an amazing presentation for you, which I think speaks to not only their education and who they are as students, but who they are as young women, and they say everything better than I do,

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: so I'll let them take it away.

[Speaker 8.0]: We have been thinking about what makes a fairy tale a fairy tale. And honestly, we think our school right in elementary kind of feels like one. Fairytales always start in a special place, usually somewhere magical or hidden in the woods. Well, our school really is the heart of our town. They're next to a greenhouse, an art foundation, and a library. And our school is surrounded by acres of forest, meadows, river, and hiking trails. We even have an outdoor classroom where we learn from the world every single day playing in our workshop. Fairchilds also have brave heroes and tricky challenges. At RES, we get to be the hero. We work through tough math problems, writing assignments, and real life challenges, but we're never alone. Our teachers are like guides on our adventure. Since it's relatively small, every one of us gets individual attention and help. We can ask questions, and we can dig deeper into our learning what we tell. And in the other tools, there's always some magic. When you suddenly understand something you've been working hard on, when you go on field trips such as learning beyond the lesson, challenging ourselves and breaking deep into ideas. When you learn outsiders, that was something cool and boring. When someone helps you out after a fall, or when you realize you're feeling braver than you were last. Fairy tales have problems or quest. But that goes to tier two. Punches up challenges, learning challenges, and days that don't really go right. But just like in a fairy tale, we learn to keep going, to ask for help, and to try again. Every mistake is a new stepping stone to the next chapter of learning. And of course, there's always a lesson at the end. Now we ask to learn to care for the world, to care for each other, and to take care of ourselves. We learn sustainability, curiosity, teamwork, and kindness. Those lessons don't just feel that school ends when we don't want. It's difficult and just make us better learner. So what makes a fairy tale a fairy tale? Magical setting, great characters, challenges, hobbies, and an important lesson. And what makes learning a moment to feel like one? All of that plus an outdoor classroom, real adventures, field trips, and a community that helps us grow. We're not just reading stories here. We live alone where we belong. Together we matter. Together we belong.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Wow. That was very

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: nice. Impressive. You comfortable you'd both go to the bus for school next year?

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Yeah. And are you excited to do that? Yeah.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Nice job. Yeah. Thank you very much.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: Good morning. I'm Maggie Mills. I'm principal of Woodstock Elementary School, which is a pre K to fourth grade school here in the heart of Woodstock Village. We serve two sixty students, that includes a 60 student pre K program, and 200 students from K to four. We serve students from Woodstock, Pompitt, Bridgewater and Plymouth primarily, though we do have school choice students from Barnard and Killington as well.

[Maggie Mills (Principal, Woodstock Elementary School)]: I am here with my kindergarten teacher, Kevin Farrell, and a first grader, Trudy Caberman, and they would love to tell you more about what makes Woodstock a wonderful place to learn.

[Kevin Farrell (Kindergarten Teacher, Woodstock Elementary School)]: Hi, I'm Kavin Farrell, a kindergarten teacher at Woodstock Elementary. I'd also like to add I am a parent of two recent high school graduates from this high school, both attending UVM because they wanted to stay in state and felt that their education here in Vermont was incredible. I would like to speak to something a little bit different than my colleagues have speaking about. We are a unique situation in that our school is in the village. And so we are able to go out into the community quite a bit. I have a fourth program for our kindergarten, we extend that pre K program, they also have a fourth program, we travel to Mount Pegg once a week, and our kids get to take the skills they've learned in the classroom, and exercise those out in the real world, communication, perseverance, all of the things we want to build in our Portrait of a Graduate. I also, we have an amazing collaboration through the schools. So one year, I took my kindergarteners to Prosper Valley, and the sixth graders planned a whole outdoor lesson for them. And they executed it in the forest where those kids were drivers of the education, role models were giving students a chance to practice their skills, and set an example. Like, yes, my students listen to me, I'm the teacher. But when they hear it from another student who's older, it gives them something to look forward to. Like a football football players come to the school, and they've raised money to buy recess materials, kids that don't necessarily identify with strong academic skills can see those students and find a role for themselves in the future. And understand that when I get to the high school, there will be something there for me, we've had students come and help with our school wide celebrations, we have students come from the high school to help with the garden out front, we have students come from the high school to help with our Earth Day cleanup, we had the band members come and join in our Halloween parade. Our young learners can see themselves in the future in all of these students and providing them with those opportunities. One happens because we are in close proximity of the high school and middle school. And it's just an amazing experience for them to see what their future could be like. Feel like at least once a week I say, Look, that could be you in ten years. And they're like, Oh, really? Wow, okay. So being able to establish that bond, not just with our high schoolers, but within our community, It just creates this wonderful learning experience where our kids can have agency over what they're doing, feel empowered in their communities, and practice those transfer of the skills we look for in our graduates.

[Speaker 8.0]: And yes.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Who coordinates all that?

[Kevin Farrell (Kindergarten Teacher, Woodstock Elementary School)]: Oh, of us do. I've worked with Devon, I've worked with Aaron, I've worked with Pat Robinson, the C3 program. We just email each other, hey, I've got this idea, what do you think? And then it just becomes a whole thing. And we include other schools. And then I share it out with my kindergarten colleagues across the district, and then they do it. And it's really a collaborative situation. And, you know, there's never a bad idea. Sometimes they don't work and we can't get it coordinated. But on any given week, there are high school mentors in our hallways. There's the Spanish club reading, coming to read bilingual books to our students in their classrooms. I mean, if you can think of it, we get to do it. And it's kind of amazing.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: It's equitable too. I mean, you can share it that way and everybody can take

[Kevin Farrell (Kindergarten Teacher, Woodstock Elementary School)]: Athletics, advantage of name it, it's not just one group of students. Every student that can come up with an idea, they are heard in this district, and we make it happen. And that's a testament to our administration because they are super supportive of that. And I feel like I'm also currently working on my master's degree. And I hear other districts, people from other and I think, wow, I am so lucky to work at Woodstock. We have incredible opportunities that I'm not seeing in other places. So,

[Speaker 8.0]: yeah, thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And it sounds, just to follow-up on that, it sounds like teachers are given something like individual agency to be creative and do things without.

[Kevin Farrell (Kindergarten Teacher, Woodstock Elementary School)]: Absolutely. It makes me excited to come to work every day, Right? I am a better teacher, because I am allowed to have that breadth of kind of thought and planning. And, and we get our academics in. And we get it in probably even better than we would, because our kids know that when they learn something, they get to take it out of the school and practice that like our forest programs amazing that you know, they think it's like, Woah, Mount Pegg, the biggest thing in the world. And I'm like, Oh, teeny tiny Mount Pegg, but for them to be able to practice perseverance, communication skills, collaboration, working together, we just had a lesson on habitats. And for the past two weeks, every Wednesday, our students have gone out and built these ginormous nests in the woods, and like the whole kindergarten can fit into one of these nests. And it's like, they're just like, the learning is happening, the communication is happening, and we just kind of stand back. They're the drivers of it. And giving kids that tool, that power, that agency over their learning is an incredible gift.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: You're a great spokesman. If I wasn't passing.

[Addie (Addie) Kelly (District Math Coordinator, MVSU)]: Thank you.

[Kevin Farrell (Kindergarten Teacher, Woodstock Elementary School)]: I should say that I came into education as a teacher during the COVID time. I'm one of those crazy people that got certified during COVID. This is my second career, and it's a real choice for me. But I feel like it's also a very big gift.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: My

[Trudy Caberman (Student, Woodstock Elementary School)]: name is Judy, and I'm first grade. People work together a lot at West To help people, we learn in class, we work together to solve equations. People help each other too, if I if you were stuck and if you had an equation you couldn't solve, a friend would ask you a question to help you get unstuck.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You. No worries. Thank you.

[Aaron Synchimani (Principal, Woodstock Union Middle/High School)]: Hi, good morning. My name is Aaron Synchimani. I'm the principal of this school, Woodstock Union High School and Middle School. I've been in this district for five years. Some of these pictures up here I just want to walk you through. We start with the bottom left. Will see you also have an opportunity this afternoon in our Yeoh Theater. But I just want to bring your attention to what Mr. Butcher, the teacher at Barnard Academy, spoke to you earlier today. One of the things we're really proud of at our school and in our district is students want to be here. Over 80% of our students in the middle schoolhigh school participate in after school activities. That means all students have access to those activities in over 80%. That's well over the state and national average for after school participation. Every three years, our students participate in the YRBS survey, the youth risk behavior survey, and our most recent data indicates that students perceive their after school activities to be a protective factor as young adolescents in our community. We are a rural community. I know you drove through the metropolitan downtown Woodstock Village on your way here, but despite that mile or so stretch of downtown, we're very rural. There are 20 different towns represented in this middle school, high school, so we're not just the district, but beyond the district we have additional choice and offerings here. But we're really proud. Students from middle school through high school participate in YOE. About 12% of our population participate in the theater program. Well over 80%, again, of our students participate in sports and activities. We have a Portrait of a Graduate, which was developed by our community, included staff, families, students, and community members, and is our beacon of light and is what we use to help us determine what things we'll pilot, what we'll invest in, our time, resources, and energy. That is our filtering device that we use for those decisions. The top left hand corner is an underwhelming picture of our school, and that was intentional. We could not find an overwhelming picture of our school, and you'll have those opportunities later today when we actually get to the guts of our building and facility, and then you may be overwhelmed or at that point. But I just bring that up and I want to, you know, kind of juxtapose the top left hand picture with the top right hand picture. These two fine students were our co salutatorians last year, so they also participate for all of their time here in extracurricular activities. And despite the facility, one of those young learners is at Yale currently and the other at Bowdoin University. So these are two students that we're very proud of, not just because of their achievements, but because of the role modeling they did when they were here. You've heard from so many of our students and staff, this is a community just as much as a school district. And from kindergarten all the way up through twelfth grade, we have students interacting with students across our schools and across grade levels all the time. And that's really important to our community, our culture and climate. So there's a lot more to talk about here with the middle school and high school. We're blessed to have the spotlight on us here throughout the day, so I'll turn it over to some other colleagues to continue, and I'll be back up in a few more slides to talk about specific accomplishments of our school and students.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: One question. Go ahead. Has this been something that's been passed down for years? How Woodstock's been doing this type of mentorship, and this has been going on for years, correct?

[Aaron Synchimani (Principal, Woodstock Union Middle/High School)]: Yeah, correct. Well established community partnerships and there's a slide that we'll get to today that I think the slide has maybe 20 to 50 community partnerships and that's about half of the community partnerships that we engage in and have. Know, as you know, why you're here talking about consolidation and being more efficient, I mean, that takes years and generations to establish those relationships with community organizations and people, and yeah, that's something that is central to what we do here. We have a whole program here at the high school called Center for Community Connections. You know, it's a whole program designed around that. So yeah, very much a part of who we are and what we do.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: It's great to have some of our board members who were here doing our Act 46 merge. When we merged, we created a strategic plan, and in that strategic plan with parent, community, grandparent, teachers, student participation, making sure that we have those community connections was a high point of our first strategic plan and carried on to a second strategic plan. So as a superintendent, having a strategic plan is a gift because you really know where you're headed. And so it was because of our board members and our community involvement that that was really elevated. You see that in a portrait stewardship is one of our key characteristics that's a rarity but for our region making sure we take responsibility for each other our communities and the world was a really critical piece and why it's represented by that global map Thank you for the question.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Whoops, if I can, So prior to Mountain View Supervisory Union, what existed? How many unions or districts or what have you?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: So I was a special ed director at that time. We were going through Central Supervisory Union, so we had at one point in time eight different school boards. We had one school board member for every four students.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Same footprint as we're talking about now.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: Same exact towns, and but had a very we had different and Terry was the union representative. We had different contracts, had different trips, we had different calendars, we had different days length of the day and so once we merged we were able to put all of that in line and as many of our gift to teachers spoke to we have a unified approach in terms of professional development you know people will be speaking to that so that when a student arrives in seventh grade and I think Addison was probably in that meeting we talked very deeply about when a student arrives here and I was part of the middle school team they all had very similar academic and leadership opportunities so when they arrive here in seventh grade they are all on the same page. That was critical and part of the work of an Emerge theatre.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Have you found that, from the feeder schools before the kids get here, have you found that they all come here with something approaching the same level of literacy, math skills, so that's beginning to work or working or?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: Maggie alluded to writing. Class three to eight to six has a very defined amount of time for literacy, mathematics. Each of those are broken down to what are the core elements so students have a similar experience and I think you'll have an opportunity to speak to some literature teachers how it was pre merger and what it's like now and students arrive having very similar literacy social emotional we all use the same social emotional curriculum so when our students we talk a lot as a leadership team making sure that when students enter this building having the same language we talk about restorative practices we make sure that they're really aligned and that all our teachers have very have all the same professional development and their professional development continues through middle school and high school.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Perfect thank you.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So I get a sense that maybe the high school goes out to the elementary schools and just works with them. Do you bring them to the high school so they can experience it?

[Speaker 8.0]: That's a

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: great transition because we're going talk about our summer program and that is help here on campus. It's one of the ways we bring students in.

[Aaron Synchimani (Principal, Woodstock Union Middle/High School)]: Yeah there are times throughout the school year where elementary students or fifth and sixth grade students from the other schools will join some of our programming, of our student projects and so on. But yeah, you're right. A lot of the time our high school students or middle school students are going the other way, touching base with students. We have mentorship programs, curricular opportunity projects in the community.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: And how did you decide which curriculum and which all the path that you were going to take? How did you come to a decision there?

[Dr. Jennifer Settle (Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, MVSU)]: That's my job.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: I am

[Dr. Jennifer Settle (Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, MVSU)]: Ken Suttle, I'm the curriculum director, and what we do is a collaborative approach. So we create groups of teachers that have high content knowledge through all the professional development we've done. And we look at best practices, we look at the research, we find all the programs that are out there that could fit our needs, we pilot those and we figure out what works best for us, that are the high quality program, and then we implement them district wide. Now that doesn't mean that everyone is lockstep with everything. We have incredible schools, incredible communities, and we make sure they're able to take those programs and integrate them with all the wonderful resources around them.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Thank you. Follow-up with that. So once you set that curriculum out and it does get altered some it's just the school that is the principal and the administration there that decide that they're gonna tweak it a little bit if you will?

[Dr. Jennifer Settle (Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, MVSU)]: So a program is a program. We have specific learning outcomes that we're holding ourselves to. So when we say alter, it's not with any outcome based differences whatsoever, but maybe leveraging certain resources locally. And yes, that would be a conversation among teachers and principals, or among our leadership team. So we have all of our principals and administrators come together monthly, and it's an incredibly collaborative team where we share ideas and make connections.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Thank you.

[Devin Workman (Principal, Prosper Valley School; Director of Summer SOAK)]: I'm working again, this time I'm representing a as a proud director of summer SOAP, which is our summer program here. SOAP stands for student opportunity for achievement and knowledge. We all know about the summer slide. About twelve years ago, Sherry Sousa and Tom Emery started summer soak was much smaller and looked a lot different than we have happened every summer since including the summers of COVID. We represented ourselves on three different campuses to be able to spread kids out and hired more staff than ever before to be able to support those kiddos with social distancing, and also a variety of different things. Outside of that summer, we have as Sherry alluded to run that program here, specifically in the middle school wing, in order to get kids more involved in to experience the middle school here at, at the big school. At summer soak is a lot of different opportunities. This these was hard to pick pictures. I have a lot of pictures if summer soak. Just here alone, we have a student riding in our everything equine course, the bottom left we have students learn how to paddle in our week in the woods course, I will never forget the day when a student joined that course for the first time and asked what a kayak was and was so excited to learn how to drive a boat. The bottom right represents our mini soap, which we have started. This is the third year of mini soap for rising kindergarteners. So this is them visiting a sugar shack doing maple creamies over the summer. And then our middle photo there is all 200 and some students that represented last year, enrichment opportunities, hands on learning are all sorts of things that we focus on at summer. Soak, in addition to the fact of kids accessing ESY or extended school year services over the summer. Soak runs for four weeks in the month of July, and kids on any EST educational support team plans, IEPs that require services over the summer in order to maintain what they left the school year with access those daily on campus, without missing any of these awesome opportunities that are provided throughout a given day, please.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: How do you fund that? Is this is that all part of the school budget? Or do you have a wish? Do you a nonprofit that benefits from funding?

[Devin Workman (Principal, Prosper Valley School; Director of Summer SOAK)]: It's a lot of fundraising of some Medicaid dollars for now, because that is how we get to support some of the students in the services. Tuition, though we keep a very low tuition, it's $200 a week for $8.30 to $3.30 programming five days a week for four weeks of the summer, we try to keep that as affordable as possible. And tuition is definitely one way that we help fund it. And then a lot of fundraising from local businesses, grant writing, things like that to help supplement all the money that is raised for summer soaps specifically and only goes for scholarships to help supplement access for families to be able to attend.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That's great. Is somebody going to talk about after school as well? Touched After on

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: school we have partnered with community Look away. We are really lucky to access an amazing program, the Community Campus. So students at Woodstock Elementary School, Concord, can take advantage of those programs. Killington, Killington Rec Department, and provided after school. So we have really been excited to work with our partners who with students at the end of the day, they can leave their school campus and go to another program. We found that to

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: be really beneficial for our communities. It has been

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: a challenge. We've had communities ready. It's really had a tough time finding that with smaller schools it's expensive to run but those are the you know that's and it was more importantly it was really hard to staff we couldn't find individuals who could you know be here from you know 02:30 to 05:30 daily and that was why we really alluded to community partners we couldn't find experts who run those programs.

[Devin Workman (Principal, Prosper Valley School; Director of Summer SOAK)]: So if you're looking for an after school job

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So the reason I asked that is because I've heard this story from other schools is you know there's money from the cannabis tax that is specially designated for after school programs, which goes after school and during the summer. Nobody ever applies for that. And

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: I've looked at all those grants, wouldn't qualify a really very narrow and its definition of who can access our resource even though we've looked at it and our partners have looked at it community partners we wouldn't qualify for those grants.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I think one of the other things to

[Devin Workman (Principal, Prosper Valley School; Director of Summer SOAK)]: note is you know I jumped on the fact that it happens at the middle school to help prep these kids. However, due to the state of our middle school, it can't happen there this summer. So we for the first time other than the COVID year, having it happen at a different campus, it'll be happening at the Prosper Valley campus for the first time ever, which is really exciting. A lot of great opportunities over there. And Cross Valley right now supports 110 kids. And we usually have anywhere from two to two ten at Summer Soap. So it's going to be cozy over there.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. So do you find that you have kids then across the entire socio economic spectrum? Absolutely. At the at the summer?

[Devin Workman (Principal, Prosper Valley School; Director of Summer SOAK)]: Absolutely.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And if you if money were not an object and kind of wave one as the director, what else would you be doing with that program in

[Devin Workman (Principal, Prosper Valley School; Director of Summer SOAK)]: the summer? Step one would be increasing programming for older students. That has always been a missing factor due to you know, we brought up staffing. So similar, if you want a summer job, I've got something for you. But we struggle to get staff and teachers to be able to work throughout the summer. We've increased our pay for staff over the summer. It's it's, it's good pay for teachers. It's good. We provide time on campus to be able to prep to because we know teachers spend weekends every year prepping for the school year, but trying really hard to make it so that those are their weekends during the summer. In addition to that, we have a counselors in training program, which is originally for rising eighth through tenth graders. And that is something that's dying off a little bit. I mean, kids really want to be able to go out and make make money and get jobs. So we have a junior counselor program for rising juniors and seniors. But with more money, I would extend our junior counselor program to involve younger students. It's an opportunity for them, they have to apply with a resume and letters as recommendation or excuse me, not letters, but references. I call those references, I interview those students, and they really haven't sometimes their first opportunity to apply for a job and have a job interview opportunity and then come and shine, being able to be that mentor and teacher to the some of those younger students. So I think for one, we have a really big representation of our younger students really like first through fourth grade, fifth and sixth grade, it's getting to be they're going off and wanting to do some some other opportunities. But really rising seventh through twelfth graders, I'd love to be able to provide more of a job opportunity with some money to be able to pay them.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: We're gonna move up probably a quarter way through our presentation. Good

[Rafael Adamek (Director of Technology & Innovation, MVSU)]: morning, my name is Rafael Admek. I'm the Director of Technology and Innovation here for the district. I've been here for eleven years. I'm going to give you a very quick overview of the geography of our district. So there are eight towns that are part of the MVSU that you can see in blue on that map. And additionally, are 13 communities sending students to this building, which you can see on red map. So some of those communities offer high school choice such as Wethersfield and The Heartlands. However, we also have students from other communities such as Bethel, Cavendish, Hartford, Royalton, West Windsor. And these students are attending school here through the public high school choice Act 129. Last year, the board voted to increase that number to 15. And so right now we have 14 students participating in that.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: Ben Suddell, Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment. I'm going to speak to our Portrait of a Graduate. So we are in our second round of our Portrait of a Graduate. We recreate our Portrait of a Graduate with every new strategic plan. We create our Portrait of a Graduate with lots of feedback from teachers, community members, administrators, and this is the most recent version.

[Ben Suddell (Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Assessment, MVSU)]: I'd say that what I love about it is you can see that on the circle there in the middle, at the top, we are locally inspired, and on the bottom, we are globally prepared. That's sort of our motto as we're working with our students. We have five areas that we focus on two I'll bring up right now that I think are a little bit different from other parts of a graduate you might have seen. First of all, academic success is at the core of everything we do. We want students to have a strong foundation so that they can be great critical thinkers and problem solvers. And then down at the bottom, we have stewardship as one of our factors. Never seen another portrait of a graduate with stewardship before. And that's really about students taking action for their well-being personally, and also for their community. We have a heavy emphasis on the environment as well. All of our schools and all of our teachers assess and build these skills in our students over time.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: So I alluded to this before. So we do have a strategic plan. This is our second round, and our critical focus areas are around enhancing educational programs and diversifying pathways, vibrant homeschooling community partnerships, a culture of belonging, purpose and joy, self and supportive school environments, and foundational systems. And now we're going to break down our evidence of the work we've done in each of those categories.

[Shana Kalinsky (Director of Student Support Services, MVSU)]: I'm Shana Kalinsky, I'm the Director of Student Support Services and in our district all means all for all of our whether they're headed to the military, into the trades, bound for college, or going to the hospitality industry, or taking over the family farm. Our students not only have the options to support their interest, but specialized staff and programs to turn those interests into careers and carve out a path for their future. Some of the opportunities that our students have are early college CTE programs at Hartford area tech center. They do four year planning with their guidance counselors, dual enrollment in college during their high school years, even our most intensive needs students with disabilities are out working in the community and in the school every day. We have a class called Future You, high levels or high numbers of internships through our Center for Community Connections, our C3 program, and we work with outside agencies such as Lincoln Street and Hireability to ensure opportunities for all our students and their future.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: How far is it from Woodstock to the CTE?

[Speaker 8.0]: Can't twenty

[Aaron Synchimani (Principal, Woodstock Union Middle/High School)]: five minutes.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Twenty five.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Twenty five. Okay, thank you.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: You're welcome.

[Addie (Addie) Kelly (District Math Coordinator, MVSU)]: Addie Kelly, I'm the District Math Coordinator, and we have a number of components that feed into supporting our district's math vision of cultivating mathematicians who believe that math is logical, useful, and that perseverance will lead to success. So the first component is around our professional learning and how we've designed that district wide for educators entering our system and in our system. So the first part is a math packed professional development for our teachers in their second year in the district. So that really builds the foundation of the why. What is it that we believe in as a district in terms of math teaching and learning? What does that progression of learning look like across the grade levels? And what are the core elements of vocabulary generalizations, notation, representations that we use within our math teaching that's coherent across grade levels? We also have four half day opportunities by grade level where teachers are coming together this year, and I'll speak to it a little bit later around the math program that we've adopted. So a big part of our work this year is around coming together and engaging in conversations about those math resources. And how are we using them? What issues are we having with them? How might we want to adapt them to better meet the needs of students? We also have a teacher development group as a consulting company, we received a grant this year to provide professional learning for our middle school and high school teachers, where they have engaged in a math seminar around ambitious math teaching practices. And we're going to do several math studio cycles or like coaching cycles with the consultants around our math teaching and learning. We also have a math equity work group that works pre k 12. We have representatives from all the schools that come together a few times a year. And that group is what builds our map vision, our mission, our goals, our action steps as a district and a system. As well, I work across schools in multiple ways supporting teachers and administrators as needed and implementing math resources, co teaching, supporting data analysis, lots of different things. So another piece to our puzzle is around the resources that we're using the high quality instructional materials, we talked a little bit about it already. We did adopt Imagine Learning's Illustrative Mathematics. It's a publisher that's publishing this Illustrative Mathematics program. We adopted that last year through a process of adoption. And so we're implementing that for the first time this year, and finding a lot of success for teachers' ability to use the program excitement from students around the materials that they're using. In addition, I've created some resources, a Padlet to provide additional resources that might be useful pacing guide so that when we come together as grade level teams, we can collaboratively talk about the lessons we're working on approximately in the same timeframe across schools. We also have the same base program, a luster of mathematics, a different publisher that's being used for fifth through eighth grade. So we have this coherence of the programming K-eight now, which is really exciting. I also put out a math newsletter every few months to provide information to teachers around additional research or additional resources, local professional learning opportunities that might be happening across the state. And then the last piece is our comprehensive assessment system that's really been developing over the last several years and given us a lot of opportunity to inform our instruction, inform our system, our universal screeners are, we use the universal screener for number sense for students, we use a star assessment platform, and then we have the Vermont comprehensive assessment, where we're looking at data district wide and, and thinking about our systems and the resources and how they all feed together. We've seen a number of really great gains in that just some examples from the Vermont comprehensive assessment. We had our fifth grade cohort that went from 42 proficient to 65 this last spring, and then we had our eighth grade students who went from 61% as ninth graders, they were 73% proficient in math. So have a lot of exciting things happening.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Just real quick, you mentioned a grant you applied for for teachers to participate in summer courses. Is that can you explain that?

[Addie (Addie) Kelly (District Math Coordinator, MVSU)]: So that was actually a grant through the Agency of Education.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: Okay.

[Addie (Addie) Kelly (District Math Coordinator, MVSU)]: That they put out around providing professional learning for teachers. So we submitted for that, and we're able to do the work with teacher development group as long as as well as supplement some other coursework for some specific.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So that's available to everybody.

[Kevin Farrell (Kindergarten Teacher, Woodstock Elementary School)]: It is.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: I was just wondering where the grant came

[Dr. Julie Brown (Literacy Facilitator, MVSU)]: in. Yeah.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Quick question. The jump between the fifth and the sixth graders and then the eighth and the ninth graders, which is great, that increase in proficiency, what exactly is happening to improve that proficiency?

[Addie (Addie) Kelly (District Math Coordinator, MVSU)]: I think a lot of it has a lot to do with the collaboration and the consistency of how we're providing those resources to teachers and the opportunities for students to be able to bridge that learning across grade levels. So the fact that we've done a lot of work now in the last several years to all be on the same page around the language we're using the representations that students are using in showing their math thinking, because there's that consistency, students are able to start the year off with this, there's this common piece to the their learning that I think has really started to show that teachers are able to bring that with students and connect to their prior learning really well. Thanks.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So talk to us a

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: little bit about, so as the kids are getting older, the proficiency is going up, you should consider them. So why, what's the explanation for why you're not doing as well, perhaps in the lower grades? I

[Addie (Addie) Kelly (District Math Coordinator, MVSU)]: wouldn't say that necessarily. Those were just two examples of grade levels where we did see particularly large grade gains in their math. But there are other grade levels where they also maybe are starting higher or whatever. They don't do the Vermont comprehensive assessment until third grade. So we have another we have local screeners that we use to collect data at those grade levels as well. But I wouldn't say that that's necessarily a trend.

[Dr. Julie Brown (Literacy Facilitator, MVSU)]: Thank you. Thank you. So as echo what my colleagues have said, thank you all so much for being here. I'm Doctor. Julie Brown. I'm the literacy facilitator here at Mountain View Supervisory Union. And I'm so lucky to work with these amazing educators. I just feel like I have the best job in the world. I shared some thoughts with Senator Bongartz at the meet and greet this morning, and he asked me to put that into the presentation. So a few sentences to preface our work here. We were discussing that Vermont's experiencing financial strain and increasing need for Vermonters to access food, housing, mental health, and special education services, to name a few. The nexus of many societal problems is low and illiteracy. Literacy being the ability to read, write and reason critically across the content areas. Cost to our nation, Rothwell put out a report in 2020 for the Barbara Bush Foundation. He estimated that low and illiteracy cost our nation $2,200,000,000,000 annually. Very few states have fallen as far as Vermont on a recent measure of fourth and eighth grade literacy skills. And I believe and I think all of our colleagues here in our community, we believe that improving literacy outcomes is a moral imperative and a financial imperative for Vermont. So at Mountain Views, I'm so proud to work in a school district with our leadership and with teachers that would work together and create a document that comes out and says success in reading is an issue of equity. So, our Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment, Doctor. Jennifer Settle, and a collaborative group of teachers looked at the research, looked what was possible for our students, looked for areas of improvement, and came up with an ambitious statement and goal for literacy that ninety percent of our students would be proficient by third grade and remain so. Our approach would be to follow the research and evidence based literacy practices for professional learning interventions, instruction, curriculum and assessment decisions. And I think you'll see and you've been hearing that we're enjoying our work and trying to do just that. So how are we doing towards our goals for literacy, not just for literacy sake, but because it is a foundation for learning and success in life? Our Vermont state testing results from, if you could just advance one more. Thanks. So, the right, let's look at that slide in the interest of time. That image, that is our Vermont Cognia state testing results from '23, '24 and '25. And you can see a significant increase in our third grade reading scores. What that graph doesn't show is that seventy percent of our third graders last year performed with distinction, greater than the number that had previously been proficient. So we're experiencing gains that are quite marked in some grade levels, all of our grades that are assessed by this assessment are between 1030% above the state average. And just a quick snapshot of how we're doing on that and remain so portion of our goal. Tenth grade is the final year that our district does a universal screener of assessment. And you can see that in 2022, forty three percent of our students were still demonstrating a need for intervention. They were scoring below green and blue, if you will, below the benchmark and below the on watch. And we are now at this, there's one more column we could add this fall, we're down to eight percent of our students needing intervention. At the end of last school year, we had eighty nine percent of our tenth graders above that intervention level. And we're achieving that. I think correlation is not causation, but all the good work that you're hearing from my colleagues, I think builds collective efficacy. We believe that what we do and our instruction impacts learning, and that when we work together, we can make a big difference for our students. I wonder what the next, oh, the next slide shows the below proficient is declining. It's the same graph just above and below the intervention level. And I think that's all I have for literacy. So thank you again, and if you have any questions before we hear from all the other good work in our district.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Thank you for your presentation. Is really very helpful. I'm curious if this rebound in literacy is possibly partly a post COVID resurgence of you know, kind of nullifying the effects of COVID?

[Dr. Julie Brown (Literacy Facilitator, MVSU)]: It could be, but when you look at national and state level data, we're continuing to decline. So this is bucking that trend.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: Okay, good. Yeah. And is that because you're making it a priority here?

[Dr. Julie Brown (Literacy Facilitator, MVSU)]: Well, again, correlation isn't causation, but all our efforts together are coinciding with this rise in scores. But everyone's on board here from summer SOAP programming to our preschool teachers to all the way up through our twelfth grade teachers are focusing in on proving our practices and following best evidence for literacy, reading, writing, speaking and reasoning.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Maybe three years ago, we had some legislation come through the education committee about literacy, specifically K-three. And we tried to support with, I don't want to use the word mandate, there was funding, there was guidance to the AOE about focusing on literacy. I'm just curious now, since you're in front of us, have you seen any net effect in two years about AOE support for literacy or is it really all your effort locally on?

[Dr. Julie Brown (Literacy Facilitator, MVSU)]: I think it's nascent efforts still at the state, and I would suggest our work here is really the result of leadership and Sherry Souza's vision for student achievement in this district and bringing the community and teachers along. So, I was recently at a presentation by an activist, Kareem Weaver. He put together a movie called The Right to Read. And he summed up what do we need to do to improve dramatically literacy in this country? And he said, step one, get a superintendent who understands that literacy is equity. Step two, set a specific goal for student achievement and work towards it like your students' lives depend on it because they do. And I was all I could do not to jump up and down and say come to Mountain Views. We're lucky enough to have that. Thank you. Thank you.

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: To just give you a little

[Rafael Adamek (Director of Technology & Innovation, MVSU)]: bit more context about our VT cap scores, Cognia scores, how they compare across the state. So during the 2025 fee cap administration, our average percent proficient was the highest that it had been in any of the three years for all three subjects. So across math, ELA and science, our average percent proficient is going on. And this is particularly impressive, because we don't have the data from this year yet. But in 2024, we know where we ranked in terms of where the other SUVs in the state were. And at that time, we were near the top. And so we're continuing on this trajectory to improve those scores. And as Sherry noted, you know, she hasn't seen growth like this in the thirty two years that she's been here. So we know that we're improving and we're, we're also relative to our to our peers, we're still moving in the right direction.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: During the summer SOAP program, students that you ever have anybody come to you and say, you know, I know I'm deficient in literacy or reading and I'd really like to have an option during that off school time to get more instruction.

[Devin Workman (Principal, Prosper Valley School; Director of Summer SOAK)]: Yeah, that's part of what we provide is for those students. You know, we follow the data and have those educators who are closest with those students to be able to make plans because it's not just throwing somebody into that intervention, it really is driven by goals and the work that had been done over previous year. But yes, yeah, we had, I I can get the actual numbers, but you know, half of our first through third graders who were on IEPs or ESTs attended summer SOAP, the other half who did not attend still came to that campus to be able to access those services. So even if families have different plans during the summer that doesn't include the summer program that we have, they can still access those services on our campus.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Aaron Synchimani (Principal, Woodstock Union Middle/High School)]: Hello again. I alluded to this slide earlier this morning. So these are just the cross section of things that we're really proud of here from our students and our programming. You know, I don't I'm not going to read all of that all of this to you, but this is a really great representation of our portrait of a graduate at work. So 96% of our students graduated in 2004. 18 of our students are part of the National Honor Society. We're a Seal of Biliteracy School in the state of Vermont. 18 students in dual enrollment programs. So many of our students participate in AP courses. Just about 50% of our ninth through tenth graders participate in college level classes while they're here at our school, which is incredible, and so on. So a bunch of folks that have things to share. So please, questions.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: So do we have access to your slides?

[Aaron Synchimani (Principal, Woodstock Union Middle/High School)]: If you don't yet, you will by the end of the day. Yes?

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: Sit on the education website.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, thank you. You're welcome.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: We're going to do our perky pace. So on our perky pace our next area that we want to talk about is our homeschooling community partnerships and what we've done to develop relationships with our families.

[Mary Guggenheimberger (Principal, Killington Elementary School)]: Well that's me and I'll be really super perky. So one thing that we oops, nope. There. Okay, one thing that we have done to provide a consistent communication system is to implement ParentSquare across all of our schools, so all of our parents receive ParentSquare notifications from their teachers or administration or superintendent, and that way they can decide how they want to receive it, either email, text, when they want to receive it, at the end of their day, not during their work, unless it's an urgent message, so that communication piece with ParentSquare has been really important. And also, new this year we're implementing something called Family and Educators Together, which really, is a model designed to bring educators and underrepresented families together, and we could hear those who we don't hear their voices of very often can come to our school in a smaller setting and share their thoughts and their voice and we can get everybody's input in our schools.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: A while back, I had a constituent come to me concerned because AOE cut back on the reporting requirements for their academic standing of their building. Did you find any of that concern here? Was your home school?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: I'm sorry, the reporting standards?

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Yes, they weren't required to report annually as they had been previous to that. Do you need homeschoolers? Homeschoolers.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: Oh no, so the homeschooling program well that is an issue in terms of accountability for parents who choose to go that pathway. We are not involved in that recording

[Sen. Nader Hashim (Member)]: as So

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: we had a bill that came through the committee this last year, earlier this year, about using social media for communication with parents and students and such. I'm just curious if, I think you mentioned Parent Square, if that was kind of a solution at the supervisory union level for that potential problem of, trying to get, gear away, drifting away from social media, use of social media.

[Mary Guggenheimberger (Principal, Killington Elementary School)]: So, ParentSquare, teachers use it a lot for their classrooms, so they can communicate directly with all of their parents in their classroom. They can share, classwork, events, projects that are happening in their classrooms. I can send out a newsletter to all of my families here via ParentSquare, or I can just send a notification to one family if I want to do that. Select a ParentSquare so parents can choose which methodology they want

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: to use to receive information from their teachers and their school so it could be an email, it could be on their cell phone, it could be a phone call and then so for example when I cancel school they have control of how information comes to them so that's why we selected that platform.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Okay all good I'm just curious if you're balancing it out are you still using social media?

[Mary Guggenheimberger (Principal, Killington Elementary School)]: I have to be honest at Kennington we don't really use social media. Our Pre K uses a program called Seesha which kind of acts like a social media but it's only for those Pre K parents to share activities and events that they're doing in the classroom but, we've not really embraced a Facebook or Instagram account at Kennington nor has our parent group. I think they created one but they haven't really used it that.

[Aaron Synchimani (Principal, Woodstock Union Middle/High School)]: You. We went with the Parent Square before the legislation came out so we had other reasons and were motivated for that before the legislation. At the high school, yeah, we were not using social media as maybe have been in the past. Specifically right now it's like how do we, we have students that are champions of reporting out on the sporting events and after school activities. We've got a lot of students that participate, so we are walking that line right now with the legislation out what needs to be loose, what needs to be tight, how do we honor and celebrate those things and communicate that way but without the social media component that's in the legislature. Make sure we're working on that.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, the wind's begun, we're behind. We

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: have students who are ready to present. Tom if you want to go and then I'll just walk us through the remaining five for you all.

[Tom Emery (Special Education Coordinator/Dean of Students, WUHS/WUMS)]: Good morning my name is Tom Emery I am the special education coordinator for the Woodside Union High School and Middle School as well as dean of students for the middle school I'm also, in transparency, parent of three graduates from the high school and a senior this year. If you skip to the next slide, I'm here. No, one more. This is a list of our community partnerships. Okay. It's by no means it was referenced before, a comprehensive list. This is just half of what we have in the community, but you can see the diverse interests that our students and community partners are able to collaborate on projects. Through their experience, they're really able to get a real world experience, you know, as they experience these things. Perky pace.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: We're Thank just gonna go through the remaining slides. Belonging, purpose and joy, again, another component of our strategic plan. You can see in this slide, this is just some representation of the leadership opportunities just at our elementary schools. Here's our that's okay. That's a hokey pace.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: In terms of our

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: high school, we have a sophomore job shadow day. We have 169 leadership opportunities in this high school and middle school run. In terms of our athletics and co curriculars, 11 in theater, 75% of our students play either a fall or winter sport, 72% of those students are identified as economically disadvantaged. There is no block to participate in any of our other two police. 30% oh, she's really

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: done. 30%

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: of our students play a fall and winter sport. 77% of our students who are not economically disadvantaged play a fall or winter sport. So you can see all the numbers of our students playing in their co curriculars. We were recognized and I will turn to Jen and our middle school team. If you want to just quickly say about how this worked for you.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: Yes, so our middle school applied to become an association for middle level education school of distinction, which was a very extensive application process. Essentially, after we applied, it was our first year ever applying. Often schools take multiple years before they are given this accreditation. We received it upon our first application. And all we simply did was speak about what we have going on in our middle school. So, we just recently went to Indianapolis to pick up this award. You can see it standing on the left there, along with 20 other schools around the state. We are the only middle school in the state of Vermont that has this school distinction accolade at this time. And in order to receive this award, we also had to make a video, which is on the next slide. We would love for you to watch it at some point. We do not have the time right now, but it demonstrates everything we have going on in our middle school, which is absolutely amazing.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: Safe and supportive school environments, another part of our strategic plan. This is really important as someone who's been here for thirty years, our youth risk behavior survey data, this was sent to us from the Agency of Health. Seventy nine percent of our students have more than ten hours a week of after school activities. State average is 24. Seventy nine percent of our students identify that they matter to others in the The average is fifty four percent. Seventy nine percent of our students plan to attend school after finishing high school. We are recognized for how well our students are prepared in terms of these risks. This is the work we're doing in our terms of our facilities across our district. You can see all the different things that we are working on and investing in. We are taking care of our buildings. They're getting old. Foundational systems is another part of the strategic plan. You can see all the different opportunities that our teachers have for professional development. They spoke really well to that. We maintain our teachers and the majority, three quarters of our teachers either have a PhD or a Master's And we provide that through our collective bargaining agreement in terms of conference access and courses. We really, the equity piece is a critical piece. I'm going to have Rafael step in because he speaks best of us. That doesn't include.

[Rafael Adamek (Director of Technology & Innovation, MVSU)]: One of the biggest equity concerns that we have is the gap between Thanks,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you guys. Thank you. Performance

[Rafael Adamek (Director of Technology & Innovation, MVSU)]: on academic assessments between students who are economically disadvantaged and those who are not. And so in the winter, last winter, we had some interesting data where on the left, you'll see the gaps between students who were receiving previous lunch and those who are not on the measures in terms of proficiency. You'll notice that the growth for on the right was this was the same for both groups. And so that was a really encouraging sign that that we're beginning to maybe beginning to start to close that gap that we experienced before. And the work is not done. It's not even close to done. These are the gaps that we saw between our economically disadvantaged and non economically disadvantaged families on the VT cap in 2025. And you'll see there are really large gaps in all these assessment areas. However, there are a couple of little points of hope in this go ahead one more in two grade levels. So in our third grade ELA and our ninth grade ELA, there was no difference between our students who received who were economically disadvantaged and those who are not. And you'll see those numbers and compared to the state average. So this is cause for us to be excited. And we're cautiously optimistic that we're moving in the right direction. And we're beginning to close those gaps that exist.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: How far out does your strategic plan go?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: We're in year two, we have three more years.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Okay, so it's a five year plan. You have a decision support template or do we need to go, how often do you meet?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: So we have what we call our continuous improvement cycle team. We meet once a month where we look at the data, we look at our triangulation of data, we look at what other things that we need to continue, you can never take your foot off the pedal and we know that. We can't because we're here we can't slow down. RAP is so great about talking about getting it through the last mile is the most important piece so we do that regular revision. I report out to the school board as part of our policy that I report annually. I do a comprehensive evaluation of progress and because I'm a surviving special ed teacher we go through each of the goals and objectives and rate ourselves in terms of what work we've begun, what's underway, what we've accomplished and so that's reported out to our communities annually. It's on our website. Thank you. Lots of it. So equity data in terms of we have 25% of our students identify as economically disadvantaged. 19% of those students are in our AP classes so well represented. We're looking at how our students in terms of those who identify as well, who identify as male in terms of representation of incident data, we were seeing a more male representation. We're really attending to that over representation of males and office referrals. We also look in terms of economically disadvantaged students and referrals to disciplinary and again that's down 6% since the previous year. So we really attend to our data systematically and consistently. Our BIPOC data in terms of 910% of our students identify as part of the BIPOC community, 2% of our faculty hiring so we have a greater just diversification has been really challenging and then we really look to see what the representation terms of disciplinary involvement as well as AP class involvement. And you can see we have a late start Wednesday where we really work on our equity inclusion and diversity policy and attending to that. And so we heard our teachers speak, have a commitment to coherence that the solution requires the individual collective ability to build shared meaning, capacity, and commitment to action. I mean large numbers of people have a deeply understood sense of what needs to be done. I hope you heard that today and see their part in achieving that. That's why the students and teachers spoke today. Coherence emerges and powerful things happen. These are all the different things you we are proud of. The list can continue. And then we have what we call our coherence document. Next one. And this is where we really, this is our commitment to action. So students should be able to see no matter what grade, say no matter what grade, I'm a reader, I belong in I care and I'm a mathematician. That's really critical. What are our teachers roles? What are our school leaders roles? What is the central office role? And I was really proud of our board. They wanted in and they really felt it was important for the board to advocate for resources that impact the policies and value the work of MVSU. So finally, we are MVSU and we are all learners.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I have one question. I know we're way behind, but this is impressive. It's clear there's something really special going on here. I think you have about 1,000 kids in the system, did I see that? Is that one of the things that makes it possible for you to do, oh, I'm thinking about scale and whether you view this as, from your perspective, the right scale, what it would be like to try to replicate the same thing with 3,000 or 4,000, harder, would you be able to get as far? What's your sense of, what is your sense of?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: So the job changes significantly of the superintendent when you increase number. So because of 1,000 students and the number of schools, we're able to meet with principals on a regular basis. We have goals. We have an agenda. We have a real focus on instructional leadership. So if there were if you were to quadruple the size of this district, the role of the superintendent would be working with school boards and with a very higher level. With a thousand students, I'm able to be as involved as you can see. I have relationships with students. I can walk through the high school. I know many of the students. That will change significantly if you increase the scale.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, I know we've to stop. Yes. I will

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: say the name number one, and again as someone who's been here for as long as I have, Merck going from a supervisory union to a school district and being able to access this quality of a team really has been a game changer for us. We did not see any movement on our test scores for years and again dedicated teachers, dedicated superintendent, all those pieces, but having the coherence that you see here having the teachers speak to that level of professional development has really made a change and and I would say four years

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: thanks so we're

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: going to take a break and then we're going break in some

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: more but we should just stand in place, right?

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: Well, no, there's there's a beautiful coffee and all those kinds of things. We're going to rearrange the space a little bit.

[Aaron Synchimani (Principal, Woodstock Union Middle/High School)]: Okay.

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: And our students are going to come in.

[Dr. Julie Brown (Literacy Facilitator, MVSU)]: Okay.

[Melissa Zorheide (Principal, Barnard Academy)]: And what time when we come back, you've got

[Sherry Souza (Superintendent, Mountain Views Supervisory Union)]: five minutes.