Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Marie DiBanedetto]: Five.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: Okay. This is the Senate Education Committee, December 8 at CVU High School. And just to set this up a little bit for people who can testify, We tried getting out of the State House last year during the session, and we tried to go to the Montpelier High School. We couldn't even get there because it's so hectic. Once you're in the State House, it's very hard to get out and build it on the road. So we're taking advantage of the time before the session to try to visit a handful of districts around the state. And we're trying to visit districts that are different, have different makeups. And we started, let me back up for one step before I do that, and say that we're trying to step back a little bit from the immediacy of the bill that's being discussed and just step back a little bit and look at the ways, the opportunities and challenges in the way that school districts around the state are working to provide, I think, the goal of excellent educational opportunity for every Vermont child. And so we actually started in Canaan and one of the smallest high schools the state. Although we're not thinking about high schools only, we're thinking about districts. But tiny little school in Canaan, if there's a school in Vermont that is small by necessity given the realities of geography there, it's probably Canaan. And so we started there and we have also visited Woodstock, a smallish high school but a little bit bigger than Canaan, and then Rutland, a larger high school. And we've done each of them, we've chosen each of them for a little bit of different reasons, small by necessity in Canaan, Woodstock to really focus, zero in a little bit on the relationship between facilities because they've had problems with their facilities and the ability to deliver education. Rutland because a few superintendents, as I was talking to superintendents setting these meetings up, suggested we go to Rutland because of the way that they provide continuums of service as they're trying to meet that goal of excellent educational opportunity for every Vermont child. And CVU actually is sort of in a way is a bookend to Canaan, one of the larger schools in the state where both different opportunities and challenges, almost by definition being one size versus another. So we're just trying to explore all of this and get a sense of the things that challenges the opportunities and what schools are doing to meet the needs of every kid, every child across the socioeconomics and ability to the whole system, all the differences in kids. And our last visit in Sanathi will be I can't remember which supervisory union it is but the Royalton High School, we're to focus on the sort of particular focus within that will be around rural Vermont. So here we are at CVU. I really enjoyed setting up the back and forth setting today up with Adam and Catherine over the last couple of months as we've thought this through. And we've had, by the way, a great visit here today. Tour of the school, overview tour of the school, student panel, we've done a student panel at every visit, and that's really, of course, been one of the most rewarding and fun parts about each visit. But I'll say the same thing, actually. It's also true about the panels with teachers and staff, the people who are on the ground in the schools. We've really had some, I know it's fair to say we've learned a lot. But we end each meeting with the opportunity for the public to comment. And we're trying to, again, we're trying to focus on the delivery of excellent educational opportunity for every Vermont child. So to the extent that that's what we hope testimony is, that's what the day has been about, business has been about, that's what we want to hear about if we can, as you're making your comments or sharing with us whatever to you share with us as parents, former parents, or to be parents, or whatever, members of the community. So but Adam, you wanted to say a few words and then that would be great.

[Adam Bunting]: Don't know that I need to say any words. I just want to appreciate you being here and I want to appreciate all of you being here and you'll find our community is a civil one and this will be a good discussion.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: And I forgot to introduce the bus, of course. We'll start here. Senator Heffernan from the Addison County District.

[Senator Steven Heffernan]: I live very close by in Bristol.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale. This will be the school my children attempt. My daughter's at Hartwich Shelburne right now. My husband is a CVU graduate. And if I can, I'd just like to say my favorite moment today that was really full circle at the legislature is hearing a young man say that he spoke five African languages when he got here, but he was really struggling to find a sense of belonging. And then CBU, like many of our high schools now, has gotten an early start on banning cell phones from campus, use spell the bell, and he finally started making friends because people were looking out from their phones. So I see representative Angela Arsenault, who was a huge part of that bill. We, you know, we do have the power to do some transformative things in the policy realm, but not nearly as transformative as what teachers and educators do every day. So we appreciate everything we've learned here and all these other schools. We have great schools.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: I'm Seth Bongartz. I represent the Bennington Senate District, and I'm chair of the Senate Education Committee. And as it turns out, I had both a niece and a nephew graduate from here about fifteen, sixteen years ago, seventeen years ago, whatever it was. Both had a great experience. So with that, first on the list, you know, maybe we can make it three minutes because we have we're not as we when we were in Woodstock, we had to really be really limited testimony. But so why don't we say three minutes instead of two since we don't have a huge list. And the first person is Carl For the record, your name

[Senator Steven Heffernan]: and your town of residence.

[Carl Fowler]: Carl Fowler from Williston. Okay. And I'm a retired. I wanted to express in part my deep disappointment that the foreign committee that met during the murder to try to discuss alternative routes and why do you kick the ball back to you guys. I'm deeply upset with that because we know we have to make some tough decisions but we don't even know what the decisions are. And by the failure to come up with a recommendation other than let's just all talk some more, one of the things that committee did was to delay any constructive real reform for yet another year. I am in complete favor of expenditures of money on education and lots of it. I am not so much in favor of supporting dozens of supervisory unions across the state. We need to find some way to take a look at the administrative overlay, not the teaching overlay, but the administrative overlay in this state and figure some way to be able to get those costs back into control. But irrespective of all of it, I draw your attention just to my family's personal history of tax rate from this community. We moved to Williston in 2012 with a $5,277 school tax. Last year we paid $7,069 That's not a staggering increase but it translates into 35.9% more. But here's the catching point. We look at 12.6% perhaps as the increase this year. 12.6% of a 71,000 by comparison is a lot more money than it was when it was 5,000. People living on fixed incomes, retirees, people who don't think they pay for schools because they live in rental housing not realizing of course it's buried in the rent, may not understand this but affordability is real in this area and since I don't want to cut classes, I don't want to eliminate music which is the inevitable first target or eliminate art or my old stalking horse history. I don't want to eliminate history. I want to see if there's some way we can systematically address our cost issue without going after curricula. And if there isn't, then we may face even more difficult decisions. But I urge you to come up with another charge to look at administration this year and for whatever it's worth to find some way to hold down the pending property tax increase is becoming unbearable. Thank you. Thank you.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: Next is David Cuddly? David Cuttering. Okay, I got it right. Okay.

[David Connery]: Do so well in Joey Adams' cursive class, I guess. My name is David Connery, and I'm a resident of Shelburne, and I'm also the vice chair of the CVSD School Board. Recently, leadership from the Vermont Senate has referred to our education system as unreliable, volatile, and one that is yielding diminishing return. The governor has referred to the education system as failing. However, as a parent of two recent graduates of the school, I would never use those words to describe the system. As a school board member, I'm also concerned about the increasing tax burden on our community, which has long supported our schools. Two years ago, my education property taxes increased nearly 20%, in spite of our schools cutting 42 positions and about $5,000,000 in budget. We cut another 40 positions the following year and just over $4,000,000 to put forth a responsible budget. It should be no surprise that the increase in tax rate far exceeds the expected increase in spending, which reflects paying our hard working educators fair wages and rising health insurance costs that are unaffordable to everyone. Yet we knew that the increase in tax rates this year was a foregone conclusion when the legislature chose to buy down tax rates again last year. We've also watched the legislature continue to pass critical education reforms Act 46 with voluntary redistricting, which we did Act 127 from which we are still adjusting to the negative impact and Act 173 which has never been implemented in earnest statewide. Each one of these attempts to reform was either poorly designed, poorly implemented, or poorly monitored. I know that you had the chance today to spend time in our school and talk to our students. I hope this experience showed you the immense value of public education at scale and what an investment in our schools mean for young Vermonters, for our community, and for our state as a whole. I hope you carry these lessons with you in Montpelier this session. In January, you're going head back into session with no evidence based redistricting masks in front of you, and you're going to feel immense pressure to do something. Since you can't, quote, do nothing, to that end, we want to remind you of the following. CVSD is the only district in Vermont that meets the minimum size requirements in Act 73 for one key reason. We consolidated eight years ago and spent the time since doing the hard work that consolidation requires. This work has positively impacted both our students and our community in many ways. Our district structure and size allows our schools to operate at scale and enables our central office to work efficiently in providing the conditions for all students and all schools to advance toward our shared mission and vision. Some examples include the super the superintendent reports to a single board with one budget, and our schools follow a common curriculum framework and unified set of policies. This coherence improves student outcomes through aligned professional learning, consistent instructional practices, and equitable allocation of resources. Our classifiers well above the minimums outlined in Act 73. Each K-eight school currently has at least two classes per grade, which allows students to learn in dynamic environments and have a range of peers over the years. We oversee the entire educational experience, from Pre K or Kindergarten through high school. And we understand how our tax dollars are spent allowing us to reallocate resources when needs arise within our schools. As you head back to Montpelier, I want to remind you that the current funding formula in Act 73 does not adequately allow continue to fund the programming that you saw today, which is provided at scale and with a critical focus on personal conviction. Forced mergers identified and implemented in a timeline that does not allow for thoughtful and careful implementation will not yield a more reliable, less volatile educational system, but will instead create chaos that will lead to poor outcomes for our students.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: We're way over the three minutes. I've been meaning to know your comments.

[Senator Steven Heffernan]: I'm on

[David Connery]: the last sentence. You cannot accept that. We hope that you won't either. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thanks.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: Nick Kennedy.

[Nick Kennedy]: Hi, Nick Kennedy. Last year I spoke to a committee that came here about what it's like to be laid off every year being employed in Burma. I was a teacher in Illinois for ten years before I moved here, and I have been through a system of attrition cuts led by Republican leadership in our state in Illinois. And what this turned into at our school, whenever all we talked about is efficiency and maximizing student products, using this really business like language for people, what it looks like in practice is a teacher like me, an English teacher, who has 30 students in every section. I think the most students I had in one year, just me, that came through my English classroom was two zero four students. You don't give good feedback that way. You don't make personal connections with kids. You don't know who they are. They don't know who you are. They're just another face in a crowd. It's really concerning to me as a citizen also how often our governor speaks about increasing class sizes, while also claiming that our schools aren't doing enough for students. Those are really counterintuitive ideas. As someone with almost fifteen years in this field, I just strongly want to encourage that conversation to be around what we give to kids when we have appropriate class sizes for them. And sometimes that means out of three, four kids getting independent learning with the teacher, sometimes it is a larger group. There's many forms that this takes, but just saying it needs to be more an increase, in my experience, does not turn out. Students who are actually capable and gay citizens of good. This turns out another face in the crowd. Thank you. Thank you.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: Marie, I can't read it. Ruticdo?

[Marie DiBanedetto]: That's fine, I know it's me. Hi, thanks for being here today. My name is Marie DiBanedetto. I'm a resident of Richmond and a special educator here at CVU. I didn't prepare anything, but I'm here to just talk about a few things that are really important to me as you're making some really difficult decisions with a lot of information. But one thing that I think really makes this district amazing is our commitment to inclusion for students with disabilities. And it's really scary right now to be in to be a special educator, to be a general educator that wants to support students, to be a parent of a child with a disability or a young person who is disabled, given the federal climate of cutting special education funding and resources. So I'm really just here to urge you to please make that a priority as you're trying to vision the future of Vermont public education, and make sure you're highlighting the voices of those children and families. A lot of parents and families with students who have the most intensive needs can't come to things like this because they're there caring for their children. A lot of those families are taking their kids to a lot of doctor and therapy appointments. So, you know, as you're thinking about rural communities and making really massive school districts, you know, think about parents who have standing appointments, and please look to CBU as a model of inclusion. My coworker Nick, who just spoke, talked about the impact of class sizes, and I think some of you had talked about how important it is at school to have a sense of belonging, and that really starts with the people here at CVU and the people who work here who have that opportunity to get to know students. And we know that outcomes are improved when students have trusted adults at school. We know outcomes are improved when there's enough staff and faculty to support the individual needs of students. And so with all of the reductions in that district, it's really scary or in this district, it's scary to think about what our tipping point is. The last thing I'll say, and I know this has been a big factor in school funding, is just the cost of teacher healthcare is going to double next year. And I think for the first time ever in my career, I actually might have less money per paycheck on even getting whatever yearly raise we get. So I would like to consider the, have you consider the complexity of that problem and focusing on our state healthcare funding, and please reconsider a single payer healthcare system for our state.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: Thank you. Thank you. There's only one more person signed up, but I have a few minutes more who want to testify, and that's going to be David Zuckerman. But I'm going to pass this around in case anybody wants to sign up while Mr. Zuckerman is speaking.

[Senator Steven Heffernan]: You're on. All right. I want to respect your time to get back to your seat. Good afternoon, David Zuckerman, former Lieutenant Governor, former parent of a student at this great high school and Hinsburg Community School down the road as well. I'm going to address sort of the elephant in the room a little bit as well.

[David Zuckerman]: We know that a year ago voters voted a huge change because the taxes were just too high and they are too high and unaffordable for most people. They made that clear based on both the bills they got in August, but singular messaging from the governor that was not countered by nearly anybody as for the cause of the increases. I think it's critically important as you go through this coming session that you separate the long and short term realities. If you overhaul the education system as originally forecasted through Act 73, that's not going to change this year's 12% rate at all. We know that these changes are really more of a two to six year evolution of savings. And the current predicament that you wrote into the law is that any changes or adjustments to taxes are tied to changes to the administration of our school. That is a choice the legislature made. It is not a choice that you have to continue with. You have the opportunity to both address short term tax adjustments, such as the second homes, regardless of whatever form of transformation you choose to move forward with. I want to give huge accolades to the task force. I recognize that they did not come out with the up to three maps, which is my understanding that the language wrote up to three maps with forced consolidation. But in part, that's because they heard from 5,000 people around the state, the vast majority of whom said, wait a minute, this wasn't what we bargained for when we voted last fall. We want tax relief. We didn't ask for the education overhaul, particularly with so little evidence that would actually create savings. I think that's yet to be even shown by the governor and the administration, which pushed this proposal and the legislature carried through. What the task force did was more than what I heard from the first commenter, and I respect this opinion, but they presented boards of educational cooperative services. That's good. And that was shown with evidence, both in their own testimony, but also from conservative think tank like the campaign for Vermont that shows that if you consolidate certain aspects of education, large scale purchasing, fuel contract, bus contracts, special ed services, certain opportunities for teachers to work between small school districts, you could save hundreds of millions of dollars while not removing local control, while not forcing small schools to close, because really that is the crux of the savings in the Governor's claim he just doesn't want to admit it. That's going to be true in rural areas and small Central Southern Vermont areas. It's going to remove school choice in some of those non operating towns. You don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. You can do precise restructuring, save money and help taxpayers Please leave now. Thank you.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: Paul?

[Paul Lasher]: Is it Lasher? Yeah. My name is Paul Lasher. I'm a teacher here, actually not here, but Hinsburg Elementary School teacher. I echo a lot what Dave Zuckerman just said. Besides teaching content, today's teachers must be mentors, tech experts, emotional supporters, life skill coaches, foster critical thinking, digital literacy, empathy, adaptability while managing diverse needs, collaborating with creating inclusive, engaging environments for care students for a complex, rapidly changing world. Making districts larger than Champlain Valley School District will not save us money and will not make our job easier. You're going end up adding more and more positions at central office regardless. We had a former superintendent that came from Indiana that was a deputy superintendent with multiple superintendents within that district, so we're talking more money there. I like to go back all the time. My dad worked at IBM growing up here in Vermont. IBM in the eighties and nineties was great except they kept on growing and growing and growing. And you had a manager for a manager for a manager for a manager. And what happened to IBM? We all know. Became not our top employer, went away. Right? So we don't need that. It's it's scary to think that the governor is pushing this idea of bigger is better. Bigger is definitely not gonna be better, and it's not gonna save us money. And I think this district is a great example of what can happen when our towns came together to formulate, we're a large, we're the largest one in the state, we don't need to get larger. Sure, you can make some other districts combined without a doubt, and you can maybe save some money in that sense, but being larger than what we are right now is not going to save money, and it's not going to help us in the end. So I really urge you to think about other savings, like I heard already, thinking about second homeowners and other strategies along that line, and to not destroy our school school system. We are making really good progress despite what the governor says. And I would say that the federal government and people have a hard, easy times spending a ton of money on ICE employment, we can employ more and more teachers as well. So thank you. Anybody

[Senator Steven Heffernan]: else?

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: A follow-up? Sure.

[Carl Fowler]: I'm happy to agree with Senator Zimmerman that we don't need a tiny number of colossal districts nor am I advocating for that. I am advocating for a serious consideration of more than one plan and for reducing the number of supervisory unions. It was very carefully stated there. Five I thought was way too big. I stand by that and we are indeed here in Chittenden County something of a model of how to make it work.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: But by the way we

[Carl Fowler]: would not try to replicate that elsewhere, it eludes me. And I again have to say, and I say this as a lifelong Democrat, I am not a Republican, I did not vote for Donald Trump and I wouldn't have in a day of hell thought, but I cannot pay money I don't have and I won't strip my family and their way of life in order to support endless increases when I don't think enough attention is being paid to how to structure the system so that it works better for everybody. We hear always about what we want with student outcomes, we rarely hear what we want with the people who pay for that. It isn't us against them, it should be us together.

[Senator Kesha Ram Hinsdale]: Trying to entice the students to

[Johnny Bush]: speak. Okay.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: We're not gonna Okay.

[Johnny Bush]: Thank you. Today. My name is Johnny Bush.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: And you are

[Johnny Bush]: I'm a student here. Sophomore here. Okay.

[Senator Steven Heffernan]: Which town? What? Which town do you come

[Johnny Bush]: from? Williston.

[Senator Steven Heffernan]: Thank you.

[Johnny Bush]: I'm not sure a lot of the conversation before I got here, but I know that it's been focused a lot on the cuts that are going to the school budget following soon. And there are a lot of students at this school I know that are somewhat needing of special education. I am one of them. ADHD, dyslexia, very common right now in most students at this school. And all I know is that if cuts were going to be made, they should not be made there because they are very needed at the school and they help a ton. They help kids who just genuinely need help with things that normal people should be able to do in life. There are programs at the school that help kids just learn how to do normal things that they wouldn't be able to do without programs at the school. And if they were cut, that would be super duper bad.

[Senator Seth Bongartz]: Thank you. Thank you for speaking out. So with that, we have had a great day here. Have enjoyed every one of our visits and we definitely enjoyed today. And we've learned a lot of it every visit and we definitely learned a lot today. So thank you to everybody. And thanks to the whole school and whole school community for making us feel welcome here and really being able to feel like we're a part of the school community for the day. So thank you. And with that, we are adjourned.