Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Our back live and I forgot, of course, to start the meeting by introducing myself. I'm Seth Bongartz, I represent the Bennington Senate District in the State Senate and I'm Chair of the Education Committee and with me

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: is Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale. This is my senate district, my school district. Whether or not you want to take credit, there are people in this room who taught my husband here. So really, really grateful to be here and show off our school district for our soon to be here colleagues.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And Senator Steven Heffernan will be joining us any minute from the Addison Senate District. But we're going get started because we're on a tight time frame and we're a little bit behind. And so now we're going to have all of you introduce yourselves.

[Jessica Hoskins (Director of Special Services, CVSD)]: I'm Jessica Hoskins, I'm the Director of Special Services at the U. Captain Riley, the Principal at CBU.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: Madam Budhink, Superintendent. So I think we're supposed to move around, right? Think so. I think that'd easier. The appropriate. Okay.

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: We

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: tried to find a very small room to make you feel comfortable like you're in a state house, But we ended up here. As I said, my name is Adam Bunting. I'm superintendent here. Also a former principal, house director, teacher, student. So I've been in the district for quite a few years. And my goal this morning in this presentation is to achieve two goals. First of all, it's to answer a question that Senator Bongartz put forward in an email to us. So what is education like in a high school where the principal can't know every student's name? I was excited when I saw that question because it is something that we have thought about deeply here for many, many years. And then the second goal that I have this morning is just to familiarize you with one of our core guiding principles. And I'm going to try to focus your attention today as we're moving through the building on looking for this. So we have 10 CBSD guiding principles. And the very first one is at the heart of learning is story. We seek story to honor identity, forge connection, build proficiency, and inspire direction. And those are fancy words. So our goal is to make sure that what you see is as good as that sounds, And it's aspirational. So we're always moving in that direction. Actually, I think the best way probably to capture what this principal is to talk about a student named Kevin. So Kevin was our opening speaker for our convocation this year, which we have about I think we're about almost 500 faculty and administrators there. So this is in August. Kevin graduated in 2018, 2017, I think. And I hadn't seen him for years. And I ran into him at Clay's barbershop. A little shout out to Clay that daddy's watching, but if you're of him. This summer, and my typical practice when I go to the barbers, you have to wait for a while. I bring my computer, and I remember this day vividly this summer because I'm in it. I actually think I was doing some work around ACT ACT 73. I was feeling a little bit anxious. My blood pressure was a little bit high. And then all of sudden I hear, Mr. Bunting? And I look up and I see Kevin and his mother. And Kevin describes himself as having high functioning autism. And I think what we know about students when they graduate high school students with special needs is that sometimes what they experience as adults is almost anticlimactic or a decline from what one experiences in high school because there's so much community built into a high school. So I immediately my crankiness went away. I stood up. I saw Kevin. I saw his mom. I said, you know, Kevin, what have you been up to? And he described his business venture that he was in called Games with Kevin. And he's leading, like, Family Feud light games for communities to bring people together. And I was like, Kevin, you know you are coming to convocation and you are leading this for our school community. And he's like, how many people are there? I'm like, 500 or so? He didn't didn't bat an eye. Great. I'll be there. What what really struck me with that interaction was what his mom said to me. And she said, we wouldn't have this business and we wouldn't be here right now if it weren't for what he experienced at CBU and at Wills. And I began reflecting on what were the opportunities that Kevin had while he was here. So one, you can see he was part of Unified Basketball, had the chance for the school to go all the way to Seattle, become national champions. That's an unusual it's hard to replicate that experience, but it was the unified experience that was really powerful for him. This is a picture of his graduation challenge that I somehow found in my emails, where he was working with a theater class to develop social stories that they were then videoing so students on the spectrum could practice those stories. And then I found this email that he had sent where he created a Family Feud showdown for our faculty and staff and our students in Winter Carnival. These are just three small examples. But I raised them. And he did a fantastic job, by the way. And this I see him at Charlotte afterwards. So we offered his services and school snapped him up immediately to work with students. This quote is the one that I'm looking at. Megan Metzler, our board chair, when when she hired me said, I don't want you to hear me tell stories of the unicorn. I want our and this is a sanitized version. I want a herd of blank unicorns. That was my way of interpreting what she said as we've got to build a system. We have to not highlight just individual stories that make us sound great, but we've got to actually do do the work to make sure this happens for all students. So I'm gonna I'm gonna share with you some of that some systems that I'm gonna ask Katherine to speak about our house system, our advisory system that leads to some of these outcomes that we're talking about where where students thrive with identity, connection, proficiency, and direction. I also want to just take a minute to dispel some of the negative narrative I hope around education. I hope that happens today. You'll see this is a think, a quote from the governor on the left. This New England knows that story that came out on the globe was a pretty powerful story that looks at kind of Vermont and Maine decline in NAEP reading scores from 2014. Problem with NAEP is it can't be disaggregated by district. So this the articles like this and some of the narratives that we're seeing would have you believe that our students are 30% proficient, 30 ish percent proficient in literacy and math. That's simply not the case. And unfortunately, I think we see I'm fearful about some of this negative narrative right now about budgets going down with that rhetoric across our state. I'd also say there's a CVSD misconception out there that I'd like people to become more aware of. I was told several times in my first year as a superintendent, you know, don't sound like you're complaining coming from Chittenden County. People perceive us as having a lot of resources. And we do have resources. That's extremely true. We also in our district have nine zero six families right now who are experiencing economic disadvantage, up from seven forty a year ago. And then we also have 100 multilingual students. When I look at that nine zero six number, that's bigger than some districts in the state. So I just I want to remind people of that. How many students in your district? Almost 4,000. So about 3,600 right now. Weighted pupils is like 52 or somewhere around there.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And are you measuring that by free or reduced lunch? Yeah.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: As best we can. I mean it's become harder with university. Yeah. So, you know, and so when I look when we look at I mean we know early literacy is really important. On our spring high ready test, we had eighty seven percent of our third graders who are proficient or above illiteracy. That's a pretty pretty remarkable number. And the I Ready assessment is correlated with the Vermont, the SBAC test that we do, the VTCAP, and that's what also be correlated with NAEP. These are literacy scores. What happens sometimes in fourth grade is you'll see literacy scores drop because it goes from learning to read to reading to learn, I believe is what it's called. So you'll see these numbers drop. But even with this drop, you'll see like 93% in third grade in this visit by town. I took the names of the towns out. You'll see 77 in literacy and in math, and then 70 up through fifth grade. And that tends to be true in iReady. This is students this year grades three through 10 who are ready for grade level instruction. So those numbers will counter some of the narrative that we're seeing.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'm sure you'll talk about this, but what are you doing, you can do it in the elevator, but for the kids who aren't at proficiency, how are And you picking them

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: that's really a, that's why this slide is so important. So if you look at our students, our proficiency rate proficient or above for ELA, then if you look in that comparison with students in IEPs, there's quite a discrepancy there. Part of that discrepancy is to be qualified for an IEP, you do have to be struggling typically in an academic area like literacy or math. But that's something that we need to think about as a district. And again, I'm not I don't want to paint things as as cheerier than they are. Jess, do you want throw anything on that that question about things that we're doing?

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: No, I think that point about in order to qualify for special education, you have to be showing adverse tests and needs a specialized instruction in the Bay City Stills area. So there will there is expected to be a gap in proficiency rates, and that gap is pretty big. A lot of work in our system to address that.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: So I want to get two, and this is math. We can come back to some of it. So I put out some of those proficiency numbers. Again, the counter narrative. But this portion of the presentation, we're answering how do we know all kids, right? How do we get to that guiding principle of seeing student story in a high school that's this large? I'd say we've been working on what we call our engagement framework for over a decade. And at its core, it's about seeing student story. But it is about seeing each student's identity, connection, direction, and proficiency. Let's see how many times I can say that in this presentation. And responding to that.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Grab a chair and pull it up.

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: I just ask while he's settling in? You,

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: so Principal Doug, I imagine know the names and stories of all the kids. I don't know if that's, like, the punchline or something. But I went to a high school and 4,800 kids, so I just feel like I'm we're not talking about not knowing kids.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: I think one of the questions is how do you know? I mean, are

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Okay.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: With 1,300 students

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: There are 1,300 individual stories.

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: Yeah.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: How do you know those stories to death? I think is

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: the Okay. Best way So you know their names.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: And the question came

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: from Senator Humphrey. Well, I said was, what the principal can't possibly know every single kid. Right. And maybe they maybe she maybe we'll hear they can't do, but that's okay. That's not the point.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: The point is

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: what do you do in a larger school and how do you meet those managers in a larger setting.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I just want us to be mentally flexible about what large is, and, you know, I think I hear from CVST graduates all the time that the principal and the teachers know them who graduated and new students.

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: In a way, that's the point. How do you work around that? How do you do that in

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: the works? But you do and you do have to do it with intention. Yeah. Because knowing each I mean, again, there's no names and there's no. And so, you know, this for us, I think this ethic it goes back to 2016. I'll talk about it goes back way farther than that actually. We've taken on the job of actually mapping and measuring student engagement. And we've developed what we call a focus for which I could go into. But it's trying to we can look at each individual student in terms of in terms of direction. How much relevance are they experiencing in their learning? Are they are do they have a sense of purpose? Again, with a sense of purpose, human beings are incredibly resilient. And I think about Kevin and what he was doing at the story at the outset of this. Like, part of his success as an adult is because he has a sense he had a sense of purpose in good learning. Part of that was building community through games, something he experienced. Proficiency, we talked about connection, students experiencing deep relationships with their peers, with adults. There is no better learning or social emotional learning in my opinion than actually being a part of the community and being an engaged and active member. We can we can provide all the lessons we want in the classroom, and that's important. But we need to see if our students do have this connection. And then the idea of identity. Do you have a sense of belonging at the school you're in? Does your school see you? Are you known? Do you see yourself in the curriculum? Are you learning about who you are through this process your educational journey? So I'd say one thing that we're doing that's a little unusual in this district is we are mapping by kid and then we are our goal is to intervene acutely and systemically. And then how are you mapping that by doing a survey? It's so it's a common it's that it's a combination We're triangulating the data. So we have a perception survey that's confidential but not anonymous, which is really important for each of our students. And then we're looking at even standardized assessments, what's happening within the classroom. And then we're looking at also things like what co curricularities. And to go to the connection piece, okay, you say you have a trusted adult, who is that trusted adult? List their name. One of the best things that you see when we did the survey as a high school is teachers will reach out to one another and be like, hey, did you know you're the student's trusted adult? And a lot of times the response from the faculty goes, oh, I didn't know I held that place in that student's life. This now is a relationship I may pay a little bit of a different, you know, pretty different focus on. So I use this slide. I'm gonna be really fast in the story. 2016, I think I was a token educator on the Governor's Opioid Council. Incredible. That's what I thought it was gonna be. Incredible learning experience for me as an educator to be talking about prevention and intervention. One of the most powerful things that I walked away with from some of the learning that we did in that committee was thinking about drug prevention and we focused on the Icelandic model. People in our district almost become nauseous when I start talking about this because I've shared it so many times. But I was blown away by these numbers over a twenty year period that Iceland somehow went from the country that struggled the most with substance use disorder and use in young people to the European country that cared the best. And when you think about what they did, they invest in their youth, they look at third space, but they did social mapping and made sure that students were connected with groups, with one another. They stepped into every family so that people could do that. Mean, it was just, to me, was like in a country where we talk about substance use, we sort of throw up our hands and say prevention, that seems impossible. To see that it's possible made me think, well, we can do this for drug prevention, why can't we do this every day in our high schools? We're deep engagement for our kids. So that's when we began doing some of the perception survey that you were talking about. And when we build these heat maps again, we'd be looking at do you have an adult in this high school like that someone that you can talk to to get help? You can see the darker colors is a deeper density of students who strongly agree with that statement. We have eight students who say no. We have eight students who are saying, I'm not experiencing friends at school. Well, we said it like, okay, if you put that in percentages, it looks great. Right? It's a low percentage. But if you look at eight as a number of human beings, no, we got to know who those kids are. We have to reach out and we have to find ways to connect them.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So you so it is disaggregated, like they know when they're taking the survey, this

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: is like a cry for help or something. Somebody's gonna probably Yeah.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: And again, we used to call we used to have these concern scores. So the the story that I

[CVU Student Announcer (name not stated)]: morning, Austin. Happy birthday. The Threads Club invites you to the Socrates Cafe tonight in the CVU library.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: That's gonna be identity. 08:30.

[CVU Student Announcer (name not stated)]: Food and drink will be provided. We encourage students, teachers, parents, caregivers to contribute to a great discussion. The question, what does it mean to live a good life? The new American Outreach Club is hosting a winter clothing drive. Donation bins are located in the main office and house offices through Wednesday, December 17.

[Carmen Wilberg (Managing Editor, The Hawk's Nest student newspaper)]: Hello. This is Carmen Wilberg, managing editor of The Hawk's Nest, our school newspaper. Today marks the start of our first annual winter silent auction going on all this week. There's an email in your inboxes where you can bid for items generously donated by our local businesses. All proceeds go to the paper in order to support student journalism. Thank you for participating.

[CVU Student Announcer (name not stated)]: Photo club contest. The themes are warm, landscape warmth, landscape, and food. If your work is selected, you earn bragging rights and a shout out at CVU celebrations. Entries are due Tuesday, December 16. Submission should be high resolution and renamed with the title of your image. Email entries to emcclain@cvsdvt.org. The annual CPU clothing swap is Thursday, December 18 in the mini gym. Please consider donating any clothes that you no longer have used for, have outgrown, simply or you feel like giving to your community. Donations can be dropped off at Room 120 from December. And now our guest talks for the day, Reed McKavey, Grant Jacobs, and Charlie Moore.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: That last day you heard the Red Hawk call. Every

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: day. They

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: do that.

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: Different guests every day. That's one of my advisees right now. I'm wondering about advisory. What's

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: right after advisory?

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: A tour but we could shorten the tour.

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: I think we could probably wrap this up in three or four minutes. Just want you to talk about Sure. So the bottom line is with intention, this goes back to Meg and Messer's point for chair, you have to have systems to know students. You just heard a bunch of it. I actually, that's like presentations over from what the students were just talking about, right? Do want you to say a word about these And

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: we can come back and you can finish. I didn't want to cut my boss short. So I did want you to know when Senator Bongartz and I talked I did want you to see advisory and really get a sense of what that actually what that feels like and I have a birthday advisor so I definitely can't miss it on today. So the school's divided into four houses we actually had Barbara Stelling two of her two children here before the Thanksgiving break to talk about Barbara Stelling and how CVU kind of her history connected to the school which was great so it's Sally Nichols, Chittenden, and Fairbanks and then within the house we have advisory so every adult faculty member has 10 to 14 students that they have within their advisory and when advisor goes well that is student home within the building. My guess is that's one of the things Adam misses most about being in central office because he was an excellent advisor and had a room I think for kids. And then so that's kind of your small home within the school and then when you arrive at CVU you're coming from four different sending schools plus private schools or you're new to the area and you go into a ninth grade program which is by design the classes are a little bit smaller than maybe the tenth grade classes but you have six educators who kind of wrap around between 75 to 90 depending on the year ninth graders and really focus on building community and helping students understand kind of the school motto which is take care of yourself take care of each other take care of the place and they really get to know they really get to know students so to your point about every student who walks in the door do I know their name as a principal No, I know all the senior names I did that this summer I have playing cards I know all the senior names I'm working on the juniors right now but do I really you know to Adam's point do I know their whole story and I recognize them it's important to know their names but the core teachers really get to know students stories the advisors really get to know their advisees stories and the family stories and that's I think that's one of the most powerful systems we have in the building And we also have three days a week we have C3 which is Community Academic Connection and Clubs where students have an opportunity to join groups that they would like to connect with it happens during the school day this happened he was five years old

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: post COVID response

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: yeah 2021 and the idea that it's more equitable when it happens within within the school day and it opens students up to a lot of interest they you know may already have or things that they that they're unfamiliar with and all adults in the most adults in the building have arrived some staff have arrived I have run an Embassy club during one of the Rises or sorry during one of the C3 and at the end of the year we have a ten day program called Rise which is our

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: student experience.

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: Again the starving under superintendent Bunting but it's an opportunity for students to really dive deeply into an area of interest or to explore an area of interest and there

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: that looks like key

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: has an end of year program and for like an end of year program yeah yeah

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: yes is Burlington yeah

[Carmen Wilberg (Managing Editor, The Hawk's Nest student newspaper)]: yeah

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: where where the seniors and possibly this is the whole school for us

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: this is not under 12 yep and I remember talking to Rutland when we were looking into this and I don't know where where their how their program has evolved We're still evolving but right now it's the end of the year for ten days. There are a couple trips that go out during that time. All day programs, some half day programs and it's a really it's a really nice way to end the school year feels very different than ending it where you're kind of going up to the wire assessment and then right yep there are independent opportunities for students and we're looking at how do we we no longer have a program which is called Grad Challenge which your husband did when he was here and

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: they lumped out in Gradland that he hiked the lawns now

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: yeah Is that what he did for grad challenge? Yep. So we're looking at how do we evolve or iterate this program so it looks different when you're in ninth and tenth grade and when you're eleventh and twelfth grade and and how do we incorporate even more community service which we have some community service but how do we kind of push students in areas they may or may not be as comfortable as part of the program I think those are three of the systems, the really solid systems that we have that help people help students be really known in the building. They are known by their advisor. They're really known by their core teachers systemically and then the rise when it's you think ten days I think one of the concerns teachers had was how am going get to know kids in ten days because it's so intense it happens really happens really quickly so I think that that program has been really important as well what do you want to do now do you want to see

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: how much time do we have can we we can

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: break and then come back yeah yeah

[Adam Bunting (Superintendent, Champlain Valley School District)]: we were up we only have like

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: two more slides left okay

[Katherine Riley (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: So I think what we'll do is I will ask

[Senator Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: you