Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Come back over here for

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: a second. We are live.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, we are live. Senate Education Committee.

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: All right. Finishing up. Back at it. And we'll pass

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: up to the advisors.

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: So I hope the advisory visit went well and it was enjoyable. You can see some of the ways that we make kind of a larger school a bit smaller and smaller communities within our larger community. I wanted to So point out this one photo here. At the end of the year last year, we brought up some seniors who had just graduated and they came back and we asked all of our faculty and it was just our faculty who we had at that time to come on stage if they touched a part of that student story over their pre K-twelve experience in our district. And the picture doesn't really do it justice but our stage, the pretty big stage at CBU is just jam packed with people who are part of these student stories. And it a special moment. And again, coming back to this idea of it really takes a system to know a student's story with depth so that you can move on in the world with a sense of direction and identity and proficiency. So here are some of the percentages that we have. Again, we've been measuring we're now measuring our system K-twelve. This is the first year we've been able to do some of the perception survey from we've gone to as young as third grade. And then as again, we're looking at data of every student, realized we really needed to try this in the K one, two level. So the questions are quite different where we have a Likert scale for our high school students, our first and second graders are responding with a thumbs up, you know, whether they're known and creating some interesting dialogue. You know, and some of the numbers, again, I shared with you the proficiency numbers that I think fly in the face of the NAEP results that are presented where people would have you believe that only 30% of our students are proficient in literacy or math. We shared some numbers that 87, 88, 87% at times That actually bears out on our SAT which we provide free for all students. The proficiency rate on the SAT is about 87% for literacy for the students who take it. So

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: a really big focus of mine year is going to be career technical education.

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: Yeah, absolutely.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I think it's okay if some students don't feel like they belong in a really academic setting. I mean, some of the programs we've seen where kids could just go to work and check-in about their homework and like really be on their own path have been incredible for not everyone but some students. Mean so how do you help students who really find that they're not on a four year college bound path get their proficiencies, feel good about where they land, and then go into career and technical training?

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: Such a great question. That's that's part of where the identity piece comes in. I can remember and I remember this with some guilt, this is not something that I'm proud of. But I can remember being a core English teacher when I first started and I would have students move through our system. And I think I had some I think there was some bias around technical education at that time in the 90s. And you would have a student say, hey, I'm interested in going to pre tech. And I'm and you'd hear this response. I think I was probably like, unfortunately, like some other faculty members and adults at time say, oh, really? Are you sure? That's not a that's not an acceptable response. The response needs to be, tell me more about that interest like and and we know that our students are going to tech that it's it's a difficult decision because you are choosing to leave the community that you are in to move, not wholly, but at least in part to another community. To support that transition well means to understand, again, you have to know that student story. You have to work with the family. You've got to figure out ways in which you make that transition as seamless as it can be. And that's, again, that's part of what we're talking about here. So when we say 90% of our students feel like they belong at school, okay, that's a good number. 86% saying that they can be themselves. There's also a 10% and a 14% that we've got to focus on both through our system and acutely. So sometimes that's an individual response or it can be the response that we had a couple of years ago where we brought a pre tech program into this high school for our ninth graders. And that was under your first year as principal, where students could be both part of the core program, experience tech, and we and some of the challenges I think that we've seen with some of the budget reductions that we've been through. We have some amazing elective opportunities here for design tech, you name it. Part of the advantage of being in a high school that this large is you've got those opportunities. We've got to make sure we hold on to those opportunities. And then that's been a real challenge.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Then had cut their health services and their building art, that they're building trades programs, right, as we got here. So we hear the budget cuts are taking away some of the most important things for our kids in our economy.

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: And I hate it. Some of it's the rhetoric too. Some of the rhetoric that was just published in our World's Observer paper last week where people are saying this is a failing school system, it's broken, we've got to fix it, Citing, that's part of the reason why I'm coming after NAEP a little bit. Right? There are several pieces, you know, I think it was Representative McCoy in back published some pieces where it's and then you have the governor's words where it's like, okay, you're using NAEP data for the whole state. Now my community, our community thinks that's true for here. That is not the case. That is very frustrating when that rhetoric starts to be spread around. Right. So we just we have to be thoughtful of that because, you know, I mean, with a 12% tax rate increase, which partly is created by buy downs year after year, we got to be we have to have our general public be aware of what's happening. Where

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: is the tech center with the kids?

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: They go to Burlington or

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: in Essex. And how many do they go for full day or half day?

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: Half day BTC. CTE has half day program too right now.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's always full. Okay. How many kids go to those

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: I was just looking at this number are we in the two hundreds I think in the high school

[Unknown School Administrator (CVU)]: I don't I can look it up

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: maybe that's a little high but no that's high that's

[Unknown School Administrator (CVU)]: I think that we had we had last year we had more students apply than were accepted which was

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: the case in a lot

[Unknown School Administrator (CVU)]: of schools because it's becoming right

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: it's becoming more more popular they're great programs and more competitive yeah which and can have you started a conversation with Hannaford that has open spots because that's been one of the issues is there

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: are wait lists in Rutland and Chittenden County and there's open spots in Addison

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: Occasionally we'll have a student, you know, occasionally students who go to Hanford will go to Essex and vice versa depending on if the program is available or

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: not. So

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: just to keep us moving here, again we focus on proficiency data. I see this data. We should be measuring this statewide. We should be looking at each individual kid, like figuring out whether they're developing a sense of relevance in their learning, whether they see purpose in the learning. And then, again, I'm just gonna blast through. 83% school is preparing them for the future. 58% school is connected to their lives. That's a national number as well. We got to think about that. What does that mean for us? And we are doing that. And yet the school's helping them number is high.

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: It's interesting to see the discrepancy too between what parents perceive their whether their parents perceive learning's relevant versus what students say. It is wildly discrepant which we're investigating as well.

[Unknown School Administrator (CVU)]: We had a conversation at our program council a couple months ago about just the word relevant and we spent an hour talking about the word. We have four students on our program council and it was so interesting to hear like the differences among the adults and then the students kind of had a their perception of relevance from their taste. Yeah it's a word we were spending some time kind of narrowing down a definition so that we can we can raise that percentage that Adam was pointing.

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: And then I figured you're well aware of this but this is our after the December first letter the tax rate that the initial tax rates we calculated off a level service budget. So that is after two years of significant reductions where we lost 82 positions and $9,000,000 decided this year we want to just be level service. That increase of 5% is resulting in some of these initial numbers. We know this isn't going to hold from the December 1 letter. We know some of this is from, you know, past practices and starting in a hole. And, you know, Heinberg was just recently reassessed, right? So we've got the CLA fund coming in. That's really scary for us in a system that we really believe is functional. And then we did the calculation. So even if we just level funded, right, and that would mean another $5,000,000 in reductions, we'd be in a place where our tax rate has grown up 6.1%.

[Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So mean, so I think there's some interesting things here. Mean, first of all, Williston has built a lot. And that, like I don't want people to lose track of what that looks like in the tax rate. When you grow the grand list, I mean, Kate and I were actually in the legislature for property tax rates going down because we grew the statewide grant list. I don't think most of our colleagues now can conceive of that. And two, I've been trying to say this in a way that doesn't negatively spotlight CVSD. It's meant as a neutral statement, but just consolidating doesn't mean you have a lower per pupil amount. Know, we have neighbors who say, like, you need to consolidate all of the districts so that we save money. And I'll say like, well look at school district they still have big school problems and they still have to spend a decent amount per student. So it's really hard to have that conversation right now. And maybe you all play an important role in that, that like magical efficiencies people are looking for don't mean a lower per pupil cost. They just mean you're providing more value to the students and bringing up your scores and treating them like individuals, not that you're kind of shoveling money back out the door. Right.

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: I think this is my final slide.

[Unknown School Administrator (CVU)]: All right.

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: All right. Questions, thoughts, things I missed, or more importantly get the tours so you can see it.

[Unknown School Administrator (CVU)]: I think us well any of the three of you have a question for Adam before we let you head out with little talk to Zoe to see what the school looks like?

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I don't have anything right now, but it's been really helpful and very interesting and this is a common story. What I'm nervous. I know this story.

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: Is it for people cost yeah I'm gonna go I'll go look up that

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: number okay I don't have that

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: you should

[Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: have that no no

[Adam Bunting (Principal, Champlain Valley Union High School)]: okay then there's a from AC 107 to now huge huge difference you have