Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[School staff facilitator (unidentified)]: About twenty to twenty five minutes. We want to try to get everybody, Senators and Snoops to lunch by 12:45. So

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: what would it make sense for you to come up here

[Laurie Smith]: more? They're going to walk right to the podium.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, I see. Okay. Oh, okay. Didn't Okay. Notice the podium Are we ready to go? I guess we're ready to go, Laurie.

[Steven Stottz]: Are we live? Okay, we're live.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, we're back. So this is an opportunity for us to interact with some teachers, one of the things we want to do at each of these visits. And so the theme for this visit, for all these visits, has really been what are the opportunities, what are the challenges, and what are schools doing to provide excellent educational opportunity for every Vermont child, for every kid. And we heard we did hear, especially from the students, about the way that there's no have nobody fall through the cracks. That's one thing that we heard, for sure. And so as we talked setting this up, I wanted to make sure we hit a few things on this score, but people on the panel might want to ask different questions too, and that's totally fine. But let's just start with and I guess I'm supposed, I wondered what these were for earlier when I saw these, so I'm just going to draw one here randomly. What happens in your classroom or department or program that provides excellent education? How are you doing? What are you doing? And the first person is Laurie. Laurie Ann. Thank you. So we'll come up to the podium and just talk about who you are, what you teach, and how you're really providing that for every kid.

[Laurie Smith]: Hi, being here today. My name is Laurie Smith. I'm the social emotional learning specialist in middle school. So excellence in the SEL lane looks a little bit different than academics, right? So when I think about excellence, I think of our students feeling connected. Are they feeling supported? Are they feeling safe? Do they feel like they belong? And do they have joy? So, I brought a few artifacts from our middle school to show where belonging, connection, and joy are happening. We have a club program that's happening right this minute. And in our club program, middle schoolers select from gosh, like 15 different fun, engaging things to do. And they all get their first or second choice of their clubs. So some of the things that are going on three days a week at this time period, we have kids playing outside. We have this display, a major coup, but a student loaned me his Dungeons and Dragons book with his characters and his notes in it. And it's precious, and I need to give it back in a couple minutes. We have a middle school yearbook club happening right now. We have a jazz band for our musicians above and beyond the regular band class that middle schoolers can take. We have board games. We have a book club and about a half a dozen other activities for our middle schoolers. So this is a time where our students have choice. This is a time where they have fun. We have a school spirit group that is in charge of our spirit week that's happening right now. So it's about choice. It's about connection. And it's about making sure that our students like feel like they belong here and it's really their school and that they can have some fun not just in a regular classroom but in these other times of day as well. That is what excellence looks like in the SEL way in our middle school.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Does that include after school?

[Laurie Smith]: That is, so in the middle school, because students are always supervised, we have a time after we eat lunch, where students are either in our advisory program or in our club program. So that is primarily and for students who come a great distance for school, sometimes after school clubs can be more of a barrier. So that's why we offer all kinds of options during the day. We also switch it up every couple months or so, so that students have the opportunity to try something that they haven't tried before.

[Steven Stottz]: And this is an everyday occurrence?

[Laurie Smith]: It's we have clubs three days a week. Okay. And we have a middle school advisory program every morning and two days a week for a longer time and that is also about connection and belonging and joy and building our social emotional skill.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, I'm just curious what's the format here like when can we go ahead we have to we have twenty minutes twenty or twenty five minutes, a few questions. We'll make

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: sure we get to everybody, but ask a question. Okay, so a pretty fundamental question. So you're graduating roughly 75 in a class, maybe 80 in a class on a routine basis. In Rutland County, we have seven high schools, and we have several which are graduating 20 ish each year. How would the opportunities change here at Woodstock if your graduating class was 20? And Would you recommend that as a change or do you see a different future balance between seventy five and twenty?

[Laurie Smith]: Well, personally I my focus is more in the middle school that I can speak to the benefit of bringing our students together and we find as seventh graders you know hit that age where social, that social life is king, right? They're so grateful to have the opportunity to build more connections. Last week, had student led conferences for seventh graders. And as I sat with different students and their families, because of my particular role, the question that I had for kids are, are you happy in middle school? And student after student after student said, I'm so glad that I've made new friends here. And we know that there are lots of wonderful things that kids experience when they're in a grade, you know, in a third grade of seven students. But by the time they hit that age where they're really seeking social connection, as their primary like driving force to have the opportunity right now, I think we have in the high 50s of our seventh grade and eighth grade students. And that brings so much to those students in terms of their developmental needs. So from my lens as a social emotional learning specialist with SEL really as my focus, I think the opportunity to move beyond a kind of a micro social group to have more friends is something that makes a difference in the lives of our students. We see it literally every day in our middle school as we bring in kids from

[Unidentified participant]: a different elementary school.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Thank you.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Why don't we do one more on that question?

[Laurie Smith]: Keep your sticks.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Keep pulling my sticks out. So the question about what are you doing in your classroom to provide that excellence for all kids? It's Laurie Smith this time.

[Laurie Smith]: Oh okay

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: that was supposed to be Laurie Ann, I'm sorry. So this time we'll go to Laurie Ann.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: You can fool me out you don't get it.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Different one, okay.

[Laurie Smith]: We've had a real

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: quick meeting. Okay. Sarah Allen.

[Sarah Allen]: Thanks again for having us. My name is Sarah Allen. I am the chair of the Modern Classical Languages Department, and I also have my foot in the English department as a literacy support teacher. I think the school does a ton to meet our kids where they are and to push them to grow. From the language side of things, we have a wonderful department here we have Spanish, French and Latin. I'm also a Latin teacher and our program begins in the seventh grade if not even before in our elementary students, and we have wonderful study abroad opportunities for students. Some have gone for full semesters, others have gone for a week or more as a large group. We have connections to other schools in other countries where we have an exchange program. And so being able to give students the opportunity to see and connect with people from other cultures and to broaden their horizon and understand more broadly what the lives of other people in other parts of the world is like has been super important I think for our students and then they come back and they talk about that experience and they share with their friends what they learned From the literacy side of things, I know that is a big thing that everyone's looking at data and literacy and reading skills in the educational world and we are doing a great job of making sure that even students who have struggles are being supported are being successful. So I work with some students who need some extra help. I know my other literacy specialist colleagues do amazing work with students with even greater needs to make sure that they can access the curriculum. We have multiple blocks in the day which allow for students to be able to take electives and also get extra help with their literacy needs or math needs as appropriate. I don't know how many people will be able to speak so I'm just sort of looking at like who's here we have amazing projects and field trips throughout our disciplines. We have the craft programs which really emphasizes stewardship and thinking about the environment so we have all of these different sort of subcategories within our school that allow students to find what they're passionate about and dig in further. We have many APs here that allow students to really push themselves. We have an amazing theater and arts program. And so I think you've heard some of these things from students as well. We have an amazing flexible pathways program that allows students to really find what they're interested in. We have team a structure at the seventh, eighth and ninth grade so where students need that extra support and extra activities perhaps within their grade levels. There's really impressive work being done among staff to make sure that there are enriching opportunities and connection building and community building opportunities that get students out into our community. We have a pollinator row people have worked on community service at various points throughout the year. So I have just been really impressed with the creative ideas that our staff have had and the way that we make sure that we are not forgetting any student or overlooking any student. There's been many times throughout the years where we've done surveys of students, do you have a connection with a faculty member and overwhelmingly students do and feel like they are really a part of this community. So I think one of the big keywords is, you know, we are creating community, we are interested in our students as individuals, we are recognizing where there are weaknesses and finding ways to support them and they're providing tons of ways for students to dive into their research.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: What are you mentioned among other thank you, one of them was the ability for a student to go spend a semester abroad. How do you reach underprivileged kids and let them know that's for you too?

[Sarah Allen]: I think within all of our classes once once you get a student in a language once they are a part of that community one of the wonderful things about foreign language classes is that you're talking about yourself you're building your vocabulary you're connecting with your peers, you're forced to read and write and talk. And so while you're building literacy skills in the other language, you're also building English literacy skills. And so we get to know those students. And I think we are communicating that like, this is an opportunity for anybody and that we have you're going to be living with a family. We have lots of grants within the community to help support students and so there are a lot of ways that this

[Unidentified participant]: should be available to any student. Yeah,

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: if I can ask a quick question. So high school, this high school was built what year? 50s. Okay, and has there been a change in student population like was it a high school only at one time or was it?

[Laurie Smith]: No it's always been seven twelve but we did have I think up to seven fifty students in this building at one point in time that was the late 90s.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: That would be a graduating class of 150?

[Laurie Smith]: It would be 125

[Sarah Allen]: I think is the biggest one.

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: 125 okay so I'm not going to ask a question but I'm just going to add an observation. Everything you described about the graduating class of 1975, Procter High School was identical fifty years ago. State demographics of student populations dropping dropping dropping. Now they're graduating 20 and they don't have those programs. And if they want them, they go to Rutland to get them as far as AP classes and what have you, just an observation.

[Sarah Allen]: I'm going to throw this in as a personal thing. I am a graduate of Timey West Rutland High School. And I will, I know it's complex and I know education is expensive, but I did get a great education there. I had a lot of wonderful opportunities and studying in Mexico for a week at the time. So I know we offer a lot and we do a lot, but certainly small.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So one of the reasons Should I go over Thank you. Yeah. One of the reasons we wanted to come to WSAC in particular was to hear about the nexus or the connection between, frankly inadequate building or infrastructure issues and the ability to deliver education. So let's jump ahead to that one and make sure we don't lose that opportunity. So next up is Henry?

[Tom (school administrator and parent)]: I know what surprises is, but

[David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: I guess I'm going over there.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We've heard a little bit from the students about a little bit of inadequacy of space, I know you've been trying to pass Vaughn. So talk to us about that connection, the way in which you're being held back from what you could otherwise do for kids because of your building, assuming that's true. Sure.

[Tom (school administrator and parent)]: You haven't walked around the building yet, right?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Haven't done that yet.

[Tom (school administrator and parent)]: You'll see it pretty easily, whether you're walking in the hallways and our retrofitted heating system that's in, you know, like it, and we're always, it seems like one flush away from our septic system going apart, our heating system from breaking down, it's, you know, ancient. I'll give a pretty concrete example from one of our most vulnerable populations. We have a classroom for learning impaired students community classroom. Last year the heat went out in it. Like the, this kind of in the middle of the day all of a sudden water's flowing on the ground and so this classroom had to move for eight weeks. A group that doesn't deal with change very well. And we didn't have another space for them. We moved them to a space that was formerly our we had a program that addressed culinary arts, you know, not like an established culinary arts program like over at Hartford, but the teacher worked here for a more traditional home economics program. You know, this is fifteen, twenty years ago. And that space is now used for meetings as a small kitchen in there, I think washer and dryer, but it wasn't adequate space to take that classroom into it, right? And so, you know, they had to deal, we had to deal with that flexibility with the population that was, as I said, doesn't handle change very well, you know, and it wasn't easy to move them in there and build a structure and support for them that they experienced, you know, where they had individual cubbies and spaces, they had a kitchenette that was separate from their classroom you know the Room 18 this room that they moved to was an oh big open space and you can't just put up dividers you know for this group to handle very easily and create your open space You know that's one of the easiest ones in my position that I can say too but also from I'm also you know I told her that I am a parent of three graduates and a senior this year I coached as an assistant with the football team and both of our locker rooms are pretty atrocious, you know, looking at it. I mean, if I were a student here, wouldn't shower in the locker room because it, you know, just looks horrible, you know, not to mention ceiling tiles that are constantly falling down because of roof problems that the buildings and grounds does goes to amazing efforts you know to you know try and keep it from leaking you know and that's just again, you can walk around and go into individual classrooms that we don't have control overheating. You know, you walk into one classroom this morning and it's 85 degrees, not a great learning environment to be sitting in. You go into the next classroom and it's 60 degrees, you know, like, so that, you know, kids are walking around with their coats because one class they need it and then the next class they're taking it off. You know, that's, you know, we can continue on with a whole lot of other stuff, you know, technology. The tech department does a great job to access Wi Fi throughout the whole building. But, you know, given our limited, you know, how old the building is and where you can go with wires and stuff like that, there's a whole lot of spaces that you don't have a consistent access to Wi Fi.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay. Thank you. Is there another so thank you very much. Hello. Does anybody else want to, who hasn't spoken yet? I know, but in case somebody really wants to, how it's directly affecting kids' education in a way that we might not have heard.

[School staff facilitator (unidentified)]: I'm going to jump in. I think the staff does an incredible job in spite of the building. They make it so it's not something that may affect the kids every day because they're able to work around it. Thank

[Laurie Smith]: you. My name is Erin Haran. I teach middle school English and journalism. We run our student newspaper here. I'm just sitting here and hearing about our buildings, I think about this juxtaposition because our middle school just recently had like a pretty cool accolade.

[Erin Haran]: We earned the distinction of being a family school of distinction and we got to go out and accept that award. And I'm struck by how like the heroic efforts of our Buildings and Grounds team and our teachers, in spite of the building, a couple years ago, we made a decision to become more of a middle school. And we know that according to Emily's characteristics of strong middle schools, strong middle schools have exploratory curriculum and they're integrative and they're challenging. And all the teachers gave up their own time over the summer to trade classrooms to create one hallway within our school. That was a huge lift at the time. I had a classroom library that was like literally a huge lift. But we all did it and now we have this middle school wing and yeah, sometimes the bathroom floods and yeah, the PA system doesn't work at all and that makes me nervous in terms of like safety and yeah, sometimes the locks on the doors aren't working properly, but every Friday my students in journalism publish our student paper and they get to stand at the end of the hallway and hand them out to kids on their way to lunch because we have this little community in our building and I feel like that's just one small example, but in this building everybody is making these big sacrifices and these big lifts to keep doing great things despite what are like disadvantageous spaces. My colleague, Laura Smith, just spoke about our advisory program. That's an area actually at the AMLEY conference, we were we earned the superlative of being the school most likely to rock the SEL curriculum, which was really cool. She does an amazing job, but we know it would be great to have the opportunity to have the whole seventh grade team come together and do team building and the whole eighth grade team to do team building. And we worked really hard a few years ago to get a grant to go take a retreat at the end of eighth grade and camp out at Bethany Birches camp, a local camp, and the seventh grade starts their year with a camping trip. We have to leave campus to do those things, which is cool in its own right, but I just think it's really important what Charlie Kimbell said, like we are working really hard to overcome the major obstacles in the building.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Can we maybe reverse the question a little bit and talk about what you might be able to do differently with the facility you would really like to have?

[Erin Haran]: I think that team meetings every Friday, which we have intermittently done in the middle school, but only the seventh grade or the eighth grade can do it at one time right now in the gym because that's our only space that's big enough. So if we had classrooms that you know could connect or a space like that we could meet, it would really help facilitate cross curricular projects, It would help facilitate community connections. In eighth grade, our students take a class called Explore Your Future, where they investigate careers that they're interested in that helps feed into some of the pathways they have access to in high school. We think that's really, we know that's really important. We take trips to the Hartford Career and Technical Center to help give them a preview of what they have access to in high school. And those things, if we had a space where we could meet as a class, would just be stronger. I think those are like probably on a daily basis, the number one thing that wouldn't be as much of an issue. But I even think about our sports teams in our fields and the way that they share and have to take turns. Those are just my observations I'm not even a coach.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you, thank you.

[Laurie Smith]: We have one minute and then we have to get the one.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay I saw one other hand up on that question.

[Steven Stottz]: I'm Steven Stottz, I'm the MTSS coordinator and I wanted to share I might pass these around maybe you can even look at them at lunch because these are some of our test scores over it I know you saw some tenth grade test scores but how they improve over time you heard about some of our literacy initiative across the valley. I know you're not that but a few of the so yeah, we're really committed to students that maybe even heard it reading, writing, speaking in every class across the curriculum. So we're trying to provide all those opportunities, but the building deficiencies, we have a lot of interventionists, it would be nice to have pods by grade and have the interventionists in those pods. We've seen schools where that's very effective. So not pulled out to go way down the hall or something, but intervention happens right there. Or there's collaborative spaces around cross curricular things, because we know this science tells us that's where you get great improvements. Our world's cross curricular, it's not by discipline. The deficiencies you heard about the bathroom kids, can they go to bathroom? Well, means go and wait on the hall. They get a drink of water, water which one's working? Don't know. Stewardship backed up into our cafeteria. And anytime they have to make repairs, it's like a jackhammer. These are you'll see cement floors. So that's quite disruptive. People are downplaying but the more you think about it, these are things we put up with water dripping into classrooms. Whole six classrooms have no heat for a couple of days. I hardly know how to dress. I'm being serious because it's the I have no heat in my office but I'm in classrooms so it's that's an issue. Other things this is a hard to secure building and we have to think about it these days it was built for a very very different time. The collaborative workspaces, the grade level teams, the innovation spaces, the cafeteria is incredibly loud. You're gonna miss that I think because it's No, you don't. Right there. Okay, the Wi Fi. My poor colleague, the music teacher, his face is under the gym. Not only is it too loud but it's under the middle school gym. So you hear that and we could go on but the more you think about it education has changed so much and the collaborative work that we're all doing would be much easier in a different space but it's really also the heroic efforts really day to day. Is the heat on? Is the bathroom open? Is the water running? These are the big you know and my friend Tom, my colleague, he wasn't joking we really are when you see the truck out at the system it's like oh man are we not going to

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: have water or school today? So those are a couple other things that's very helpful I think we

[Tom (school administrator and parent)]: have to stop right yeah

[Laurie Smith]: sorry and and thank you all these teachers thought they were talking earlier and they rescheduled and they hung in for so thank you all and again have opportunities to connect so the senators now have an opportunity to go to middle school lunch with the students so you'll each be paired with a student and then we'll be attending a class with that student before we do the building tour.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Can we leave our things here? Okay.

[Laurie Smith]: Back live at what time?

[Steven Stottz]: Are we coming back here?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We're not coming back here right?

[Laurie Smith]: We're not going to come back here we'll be back live in the auditorium at 02:30

[School staff facilitator (unidentified)]: for a 02:30 starter.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay so I can show you where that

[School staff facilitator (unidentified)]: is I have a bunch of students that are