Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: We are live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We are live. Okay. This is the Senate Education Committee back after a tour of the school and lunch with students and teachers. It's a lot of fun.

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: And we're back here at

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: the Vanderpoo Valley High School. We'll introduce the committee in a second just to say that try to start all of these panels off with. What we're trying to do is take a little time we have before the session starts when it's impossible to get out of the buildings, frankly, and get out and go to some go to some districts around the state. We try to identify districts who are all a little bit different than each other so that we get a different perspective with each visit. The overarching theme is providing excellent educational opportunity for every Vermont student. That's what we're trying to that's what we're talk about. The opportunities you see, the challenges you see in what you're doing. And here we are with this school. We've chosen partners in this district in part because we wanted to really focus on rural Vermont, as rural Vermont is trying to provide the same opportunities for kids that other schools have tried to do. So that's the of old Russian theme. I'm Seth Bongartz, so I represent the Bennington Senate District in the Senate. I'm chair of

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: the Senate Education Committee. And over here on my left. Steven Heffernan, Addison County District.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Kesha Ram Hinsdale, Chittenden County and I taught

[Speaker 0]: for several years not so long.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Good afternoon Dave Weeks representing Rutland County and I live in Funk.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Good afternoon Terry Williams. I represent Rutland County and I live in Poland. Just one more comment to make is each stop we've done, we've done a student panel like we did this morning and a panel with teachers. Those are two groups we don't get to hear from that much during a session. And so those those students, obviously, very close to the ground, teachers very close to the ground.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: That's what we're really so this is one of the highlights of the trip, so I guess what I wanna say. So we really want to hear it from you. We've had great interaction with teachers at other schools. You're on. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Can you hear me okay? Yeah.

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: Name is Brian Herrick. I am a new

[Brian Herrick (Librarian, The Newton School, Strafford)]: school librarian at the Newton School in Stratford. It's a K-twelve school. It's my second year there. I'm brand new, but it's my thirty first year in education. So I'm a

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: career educator. Being new to

[Brian Herrick (Librarian, The Newton School, Strafford)]: a place definitely allows you

[Speaker 6]: to see it in a

[Brian Herrick (Librarian, The Newton School, Strafford)]: different way and have an outsider lens. And I've been very grateful to step into the community, be welcomed, and really see what rural schools look like.

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: Also being new, I felt like it was really important to get the information from my colleagues.

[Brian Herrick (Librarian, The Newton School, Strafford)]: So the documents that we put in front of you was something that I put together after using a survey at my own school. And that was very successful in getting their quotes and perspectives. And then I did the same thing with my colleagues here. So there's a second document as well. And I think, you know,

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: what you're going to see is some real through lines in there. Things like school is part of community, students who are known and seen individualized differentiated learning, relationships drive academic success, and

[Brian Herrick (Librarian, The Newton School, Strafford)]: local voices and choice. So I know there's a lot of text there, and I'm grateful if you take the time because I think that you're going get the comments from the people who couldn't necessarily think it today. Did you give a

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: copy to our staff? Absolutely. Okay. And

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: before I turn it over to my colleagues, I wouldn't be a librarian if I didn't think you'd bring it back to books. So I just have

[Brian Herrick (Librarian, The Newton School, Strafford)]: to read very quick.

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: If you haven't read Gather yet, in the words of Ken Cotto at the end, he says, in my teaching career I've encountered dozens upon dozens of stories like Hans. Kids whose spirits are threatened to be crushed by societal disregard. The kids were able to pull through by the ingenuity of their skill set and the strength of their character, as well as the care of their larger communities, are some of the strongest people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

[Brian Herrick (Librarian, The Newton School, Strafford)]: And I really think that sums up what rural schools and communities do for students. Thank you.

[Lisa Dragon (Science Teacher, White River Valley High School)]: Hi, I'm Lisa Dragon. I'm Lisa Dragon. I'm a high school science teacher here at Windhamer Valley High School. And I was thinking about what to share with you today. I think it's important to mention that our high school was part of a voluntary merger with that great thing. So we joined with Bethel and really created a brand new school. And while I think both schools were doing really great things, I think we've done greater things together even though it was a challenging process. One of the things I think that made that merger so successful is that there was an incredible amount of collaboration beforehand. We had, I don't know how many, multitudes of committees involving students and parents and community members and teachers trying to get it right. And I think what we've built since then, I think we've really got right. And we have, I think, the size high school that we have right now is really uniquely positioned to let us do what we value. Right? So as I'm thinking about what we really value is, you know, we want to know every student well. I think everyone needs to be heard and seen and valued before they can be willing to take those academic and social risks that really result in growth in the community. So the fact that we can get to know every student well, and I mean that both through personal relationships with kids, but also through the data. How do we really target our courses? How do we target our interventions and supports for them? How do we create those community structures that are going to help them? Really requires a pretty intimate knowledge of where kids are, right? We really strive to create opportunities here that every kid could participate in. I came here from a much larger school district, and I remember coming here and thinking, well, there really aren't the clicks here. I saw it in the theater school, and why is that? And it was because everybody was involved in everything. Theater kids playing sports. Like, I didn't see that in bigger high school in which they had to try out and maybe wouldn't get on the team or wouldn't get to participate. They really get to find out who they are and give these opportunities. And I think we're flexible and can evolve. We created many new courses, even in the last five years, to target what kids need. If they're struggling in math, we create a math course that's kind of persecuting them, kind of allow them to gain those skills, right? And then I think all in all, our focus on community is really about belonging, right? They have to feel like they belong in a place. And, you know, I have my own student that started the middle school, think, would be a small middle school would be relatively hot in a big school. Right? So I think, you know, we have at a time where a lot of students are experiencing a crazy world and a lot of anxiety and depression and struggling with social structures, having a place that they can go and be known and understood and supported has been really important for our kids. And, you know, it's not just about the community. We see this in our data. Like, I think the science department, and we are so proud. We're across the SU 12% above average for the last year, which is just, you know, big to their hard work. And the kids say that it feels like a family being here. That feels good. You wanna go every day one of the time. Thank you. You. My name is Lindsay Shell. I'm a preschool teacher and preschool director at Sharing Hall Rampus School.

[Lindsay Shell (Preschool Teacher/Director, Sharon Elementary)]: In my room, I have three, four, and five year olds for the school and election. Right now, we have Monday through Friday here, on May 3, so the full day, which is really wonderful. That helps them support families to offer that full school day. Also offer aftercare services, which are three to five, which help support our families even more. My primary goal when three, four, and five year olds is to develop their social and emotional skills. And I do that with creating personal and authentic relationships with them. And when you create those personal, excuse me, and authentic relationships, that really helps you build community, being part of a community, providing a sense of purpose and value. And I'm able to do that in a small, little school. Hi, I'm Donna Gowan. I am a teacher and leading interventionist at the Rochester Southbridge Unified District.

[Donna Gowan (Teacher and Reading Interventionist, Rochester/Stockbridge Unified District)]: Two schools, about 10 in a small school, a child is truly known by responding to academic strengths and challenges, teaching life skills and providing emotional support. We continually adapt to each child's experience. And we call it RSAD for now. At RSAD individualized reading and spelling assessments are given to our K-three students, so we can accurately determine exactly where each child is currently at instructionally and be able to provide the right instruction to speak to their explicit needs. And we thoughtfully formed these reading groups and spelling groups, which in a small school allows us to be flexible where there may be a second grader that's really doing work closer on a third grade level and being able to have those children be able to be a part of a different classroom. So we're able to be incredibly flexible and meet the local respondents. We, of course, provide intervention needed, but we also do something we call double dipping, which is when some students just need a little bit more practice in certain things, things like fluency or being able to practice words that they may have missed before the goodbye list or more accurately being able to use certain words. So all of us pitch in to be able to support students in that way. We know that science based literacy instruction is essential and foundational for our students. So we take that extremely seriously and work really hard to give students what they need. And in a small school, we can also enjoy academically rich bonus literacy sort of activities, things like literacy in woods or poetry gyms or items of meat events for the community members. We love to have books and bagels. We have that a few times a year, which supports our local businesses, bagels in both towns that provide miniature sized bagels, and we have families come in to meet with students. So we really try to pull in the community as much as possible and be immediately responsive to what our community needs and providing extra as well. I'm Mary Schell.

[Mary Schell (Community School Coordinator, WRVSU)]: I'm the Community School Coordinator for WRPSU. This is my fourth year. I'm starting my fourth year in the position and we were one of the five funded community schools in university cohort from community school at 2021. I spent twenty six years in the high school classroom as a social distance teacher in three high schools. Moving on. And I was the director of the organization up for learning for three years. And I'd like to share my perspective on community schools and the impact that attending pre college and might have on our efforts to perfect time to grow our community connection. As a community school we believe that it is a system that communities not schools alone are responsible for and responsive to the conditions necessary for children to thrive. Our community school model shifts from an inward isolated model based on playing a finite amount of resources teachers building budget class sizes to one that sees and utilizes vast resources. Community members, including UBM intern expertise, intergenerational learning, and resources that reflect the people and the places that children know and where they live. Ultimately, as a community school, we are intentional about removing barriers to student and family engagement by utilizing local resources and building collaborative relationships with and between our community partners. This results in meaningful engagement where families and children can position themselves in a larger and deeper context. And both our schools and community members are provided with opportunities to be part of something bigger than themselves. Our intentional efforts are built one conversation at a time and one relationship at a time while at the same time building systems so that we do not revert to an isolated and disconnected school model. Our community school effort provides an integrated system that finally facilitates the best of all of Vermont's aspirational education legislation and to be present to multi tiered systems and support. We are grounded in the truth that learning and well-being of our students, families, and communities cannot be separated. These relationships cannot simply move into a larger system without being weakened or lost protecting White River Valley supervisory healing matters it matters because strong schools communities because rural schools sustain the future and because the choices we make now will shape rural Vermont far beyond my career and yours for decades to come. I urge the committee to recognize that rural schools are not duplicative structures They are the backbone of rural communities. Consolidation risks unraveling ecosystems that allow children, families, and our communities to thrive, and that is our shared responsibility. Thank you.

[Kylie Edwards (Special Educator, Bethel Elementary; former Alt Ed program lead)]: Hi, I'm Kylie Edwards. I'm a special educator at Bethel Elementary that is also in this district. So we are a school in South

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: Rose Mountain District in Brownsville.

[Kylie Edwards (Special Educator, Bethel Elementary; former Alt Ed program lead)]: I had the pleasure years ago working here. I ran the alternative education program in the elementary level, and that serves students from across the supervisory union. Those were students that would have otherwise been placed out of district at an independent school in another community. But we've had the opportunity to have those students here in our supervisory union, allowing them to stay connected to teachers who they already do, special teachers, so like the librarian music teacher, they maintain those connections. They maintain connections with their peers in their community. They still have access to making those relationships, working on those relationships. And one thing for me that was really important was having students stay here really contributes to their sense of belonging. When they're sent to an alternative school, an independent school out of their community, they don't always feel like they belong in their community still. And allowing them to stay here really gave them a sense of belonging, that they're still part of our community, still part of White River Valley Supervisory Union. Students are ready to transition back away from an alternative program. We have so many opportunities to integrate them in a meaningful way that's important to them. The students like art class. Okay, we can start there. It's not just kind of, oh, you're pushing back in time. They can really be intentional about that student. Evening students in our supervisory union allows students and families, and importantly, also to connect with the adults that they were already working with. They don't have to come up with a whole new team of people working in another school. They are now still having the same adults and the same team members working with them, same special educator, senior director of special services. And it allows us to continue to gather the young students so that we can serve them continuously, not kind of disjoint them down or gone. And then we come back, we are serving them continuously throughout their time going from a mainstream to an alternative and hopefully back to a mainstream. Right now, I work also as a direct services provider in Bethel, so I help students for specialized services. And one of the things I love about our small community and small school is all of the students are our students. If a student goes into special ed, it is not now just fair student special ed. They are all of our students, and I really feel that in our small school. You know, the classroom teacher and the special educator and all the related service providers really work together to make sure that student gets not just belonging alongside of them. I think having our smaller schools, we can identify challenges for here. You know, we are having the data, and you can see in those data, maybe the kiddo is struggling with it, getting intervention in place immediately and then move up the long digits there. Our schools really support inclusion while still meeting intensive needs. For our students who have intensive needs, they are still included in their community and they're still part of their community. That's really important. Thank you. Hello. My name is Stephanie Russ. I am currently a first and second grade literacy teacher at Bethel Elementary School. I have been teaching in Bethel for approximately twenty years and also in the primary grade level.

[Stephanie Russ (Grade 1–2 Literacy Teacher, Bethel Elementary; Parent)]: I am also a resident up here in South Royalton, and I grew up in Cambridge. So I come from a very small school setting background as a student and now as a parent. I currently have student here in high school as a sophomore, and my eldest son just graduated last year from high school. My talking point today is really just talk about the personal relationships that I have built as a staff member and to also talk about how my children are building those same relationships as students in their school. When I first came to Bethel as a teacher, I was very nervous and I had a lot of support around me to just learn the curriculum and to build up relationships and building the benefit over the last twenty years is that I've had a lot of those same members of our community in our schools stay, which has built really strong bonds among us within our building. It doesn't matter if it's a personal issue or we're having trouble with a student or we just need the question answered and we need some help with something. We really have a strong commitment to each other as staff and a commitment to our students to have those conversations as needed or to get them to work on a moment's notice that you're feeling a pinch or feeling a struggle. I've always had support surrounding me, whether I was a beginning teacher or a veteran teacher. And I think the small schools really allow those opportunities to happen because we get to know each other on a personal basis, not only from what we do within our school, but what we do outside of our school. My children are both able to be a part of the merger as they came into the Bethel and Beth Royalton schools. My son was a sixth grader, so he actually got the opportunity to experience it full through and then of course my other son is doing the same. He was the first group to come together at the sixth grade class in the middle school. And that opportunity allowed him to get to know the kids on another level. They got more opportunity to be able to do other things at the larger group, but also even at the small community center. We also experienced COVID within that time. So that was also a new experience. And just speaking as a parent from that perspective, I still saw community come through the screen. We were able to communicate via email, through Google Meets, which was fairly new to me but we got on real quick. And I would just say they had the opportunity to show us the support and receive support if necessary. And also, it really showed me how well teachers are able to plan some amazing lessons in a really critical time in our life. Moving forward as a teacher in that time, I didn't know how that was going to look. And all I can say is the small community will really value about you when you're having a hard time. And they were able to give support from a pleasant distance. And I can only say thank you so much to those parents because without them and without the support that I felt through a screen or a text or something of the same, I don't know if I was even doing a good job or felt like I was helping my kids at that time. But we pushed forward and we were rewarded. I don't know of the larger schools because I've never had the experience to have that same feel, but I still felt centered and it felt like home and I felt confident for my students and for myself as a parent. For the last twenty years, I would say education has certainly changed, and the conversations we're having now are not ones I would have necessarily expected. But having been through so many different aspects of the education with my kids and with myself. I can only say that the hope that the conversation we continue to have will benefit all of us as you guys move forward with this. But I am thankful for my staff that works with me daily. I'm thankful for the opportunity to have people support my kids with their personal learning plan. Both of my children work very differently. And it is not uncommon to get an email or like, hey, how are doing at a basketball game? I wanted to check-in with you. So I just feel like those personal moments are not necessarily something you would see if you were in a larger community. And I can only say thank you for those moments because without them, I might not know if my kids are doing the best they could be in those relationships. Thank you. Hi, my name is Nader Barnum. I come to you today at a pre K and five grade school camp floor. I'm also Karen at sophomore in high school who is utilizing school choice and a third grade was an emerged district in First Grant.

[Nader Barnum (School Counselor/Parent, First Branch Unified District)]: Those 13 towns struggling under the number of district. I will come to you as a child, an adult child now of a family of who I was raised as a business owner, a small business owner in the state of Vermont. My parents ran a small country store for nearly twenty years. So I understand the burden that all of you are facing in the legislature, and we are as a Vermonters. I also recognize that I made a conscious choice in 2006 to return to Vermont or excuse me, 2005 to return to Vermont, and in 2006 to work in public education. It was then I was given the opportunity to become a school counselor at Chelsea School. At that point, it was a K through 12 school. At that point, the enrollment was probably around three twenty five students, again, K through 12. So I want to share some thoughts from my perspective as a parent and as a school counselor. Small schools are a vital fit community. They're often in all of our communities in the state of Vermont. Small schools from my perspective provide individualized educational opportunities and are really able to meet the needs of students socially, emotionally, and academic. As we've seen and you've heard from my colleagues today, we are really data driven in Vermont education, and we're looking at students invadingly and making conscious decisions to be a busy student. As I said, I was able to begin my career as a behavior counselor in a small town. When I'm 46 came along, the town of Chelsea, like many other towns, did what was that. And through the process, they closed in high school. It was through this process that the residents of Chelsea decided that they would become a choice town. This was done through a process that involved everyone's voice, everyone's needs, and everyone's goals for educating children in our town. Successful mergers require time. They require time for envisioning, planning, and are voluntary. As a school counselor in middle school, I have a distinct opportunity every year to work with families in the eighth grade. We bring in and invite local high school to come in and participate in what looks like a college fair, but it's really a high school fair where families and students get the opportunity to meet with high schools and to help start the process of determining what is the best fit for their student, what is the best fit for their family. And so that is also one of the reasons that I stay in education is because I get to help families and guide them to whatever is the best fit for them for high school. One size does not fit all and all of our students deserve the opportunity to make the best decision for themselves and families make the best decision for their families. So thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Questions? Just out of curiosity about kids going into high school in Chelsea what kind of blocks of kids go there and what kind of percentage?

[Speaker 0]: Okay. So prime oh, sorry. I got used remember. Primarily our students who live so what's important to note is that I work for the First Ranch Unified District. So we operate a pre k through eight school except for I work in Chelsea. So that is the pre k five through eight. And in Tunbridge, it's The UK or four campus. So students in Tunbridge and Chelsea all have school choice. So our eighth graders in Tumberge and Chelsea are choosing to attend White River Valley High School, Bedford Academy, and Sharon Academy, primarily. I would also say that there are certain other students and other families that are choosing schools, in other parts of Vermont. And when I say that, I say, you know, U32, if it means Montpelier Montpelier, we have students who have gone to Hartford High School. So it really comes down to what is the best fit for the student and what is the best fit for the family, also depending upon where the families are working.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Questions from the committee? Yeah.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So I didn't think I'd fully taken on board before today that a choice community isn't part of the vote for bonding for their regional high school. So that seems to me one of the main problems that people are asking us to solve at the legislative level is how do you have just a handful of local communities having to bond and make that decision about supporting something as massive as a comprehensible high school when there are towns that are not part of any of those bonds? Both? I don't know if others can speak to that, but I just wonder, I mean, I think, I don't think anybody, I don't want to close anybody's school, you know, I was encouraging your students to think what if this high school was bigger, Frankly, what if you did get your performing arts center? And the only way I see the legislature being able to help that become a reality is drawing complete maps that say, you can send your child wherever you want, but you are paying for this region's school facility.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Part of the answer may be the tuition level of tuition that gets charged by the receiving school.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But it I think it

[Speaker 0]: should be going to public school.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: But it's different, though, But but the receiving schools can show us that set of tuition.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But you can be a choice town. I still think you have to be paying for the public facility in your region.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We'll talk about that. Yeah. Anyway. Like what was it they do it in the right way?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. And I don't I don't think I mean, I'm certainly not the expert on this. But I think, know, I live in a town where my taxes go to both my educational taxes go to the local school in which I live in, but also help support the tuition of high school students. Part of my role in the school counselor is when I'm working with students and family, I'm collecting data that helps inform budgetary decisions. So our business office can look at where the students are going to for high school and build help build a budget around that because high schools do vary with what the cost is.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So questions from the committee? I'll ask one, don't know, could also be a question for the principals or the superintendents, but how are you doing keeping kids at the grade level for math and English and, like, by the time they get into high school, are they how are you doing with those? And I'm somebody who is, you know, skeptical or just always looking at test scores, who know that doesn't begin to tell the story. But just in terms of that, how how are because you talked about intervention and the work you do to help kids keep up. How are you how are you doing?

[Speaker 0]: I think we do an exceptional job, frankly. We are able to see every child and lead every child's needs. We have very specific instructions that we give students to be able to help them where they're at and to help them to be able to grow. And we have really the math curriculum that we're using. We're using SUY, and that has made a huge impact on the success of our students. And in terms of literacy, as I spoke to them already, it's very individualized where students are at and and a phenomenal job. We can't really speak to our small schools too much because we're too small to be able say anything too specific, but in our small school, we're almost on some test scores is 100% aware of the grant in terms of meeting or doing the funding. So I think that we've done things exceptionally well. An example I can give you is we have one small class this year where 75% of the kids are on the nine UP, and it's a very small class, not something that we would want to have a class necessarily that small, but the growth of those students have seen this year has been phenomenal. And a part of that is because that class or teacher is giving the tier one instruction very specifically to each of those children right near their end so that's been pretty incredible. I just wanted to back up, Tom. In my literacy class right now in first and second grade, I have a lot of good opportunity to work with students individually, but also in small group. And we've really focused in the last couple of years in doing a better job of progress monitoring students, so catching them earlier than when we would go to our testing windows. So I'm able to test students within a two week window to check-in on certain skills. At And that point, I can let the intervention know, like, I'm seeing the concern for staying like, live with this child is making some really wonderful progress. I just want to let you know what I'm seeing here in the classroom. And I will say our interventionist and I talk daily and we meet weekly. So we are able to really keep track of how our students are doing. We're currently in the middle of our testing window now. So more information can come about how the progress has moved forward the beginning of the year. But I think progress monitoring also helps us really catch things before we make a three month period. Also think we use a variety of strategies as well. You have Wilson. You have Orton Gillingham. You have DI. And if DI isn't working for this kid, why don't we have this working for this kid? We have a number of strategies that we can pull from internally to help support a kid and give them the program that is best for them.

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: Just real quick. I adjusted a research project in my library because

[Speaker 5]: I was trying to figure out

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: where we were with circulation in middle school.

[Speaker 5]: So I had to look at reading scores in the middle school

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: to

[Speaker 5]: able

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: to see that we are at or above grade level in

[Speaker 5]: the middle school. I know that's true for the younger as well. And I think it speaks to what people are saying, which is we have been sure differentiated learning. We have an opportunity in a small community to really pay attention to who needs what support so that we are able to keep up with who needs what and move forward.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah, I know Senator Heffernan has a question. Oh, go ahead.

[Speaker 0]: Yeah, I

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: was just going to say,

[Speaker 0]: we start this early as pre pay. So we're doing literacy, that social emotional skills is, you know, at the top of the list, but we use bridges that different programs should be referencing. So we're working on all of these curriculums that they rely as the year go on. And we also have intervention staff that can set in and hit them before.

[Speaker 6]: So Senator Heffernan had a question. So my question is I realize how important Google schools are, but as a community, how do we decide on this time to say this school's gotten too small and we should do something about it.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Are your thoughts? Because some of

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: you have seen schools oppose. And often or not, you always felt that it's hard to which is hurting imagine. Our community. But one has the community decided that boy, you did the child's education is most important. You can't afford that at the jail. When do you because that's the decision we're making and we need help going around to the schools helping us try to make that complicated change. But you're working in it. How what kind of answer would you give to that? Of when is there a total point that you said you may have to close community school because that's what we're telling you.

[Speaker 0]: So in Rochester the soccer treatment emerged in that '46. It was a bit of a painful process to go through that at that time. And we've done some amazing things since then with having them to school, including sharing the principles in buildings. We know that we're small, and we believe there's things that the school board can do to be able to have our two school communities be able to we work phenomenally well together already, but there's more that can be done in terms of class size. One of the things I wanted to mention is we had a pay one teacher at Sunbridge School for over thirty years probably who was amazing, an amazing teacher. And one of the amazing things about the in the Supervisory Union is how willing they are to do whatever it takes to support students even including Vernon and Davis. She retired last year and we have a new teacher this year who had to talk at a much bigger school this year so she is very so fortunate that she as well is an amazing teacher. What she said to me well before the school year started we talked about how her students will be reading, kindergarteners will be reading that is what happens for us. I've never never seen that before by first grade but not in kindergarten so the kindergarteners will be reading. So what she said to me was that she's blown away here it is December with how quickly she's seeing results far more outcomes, the students are easily able to make progress, she has time to be able to get them to where they need to be. And then she had lots of lovely things to say about the community and how welcoming it has been to her. But for her being in two different perspectives and being able to see how much more she can do with students with it being a smaller setting was night and day to what her students are able to accomplish so I don't know how small is too small I just know when it's small we're able to do great things so or yeah you go then then senator Weeks and then we probably have to wrap this up because we're up against the clock I would just say we are very fortunate in the White River Valley Supervisory Union to have really strong leadership at that level and we're all speaking to curriculum that we use and I might be the only school counselor in my building But we're all using a shared curriculum, Supervisory Union wide, as well as the math and reading interventionist classroom teachers. So there's a lot of sharing that happens at the supervisory level that does provide efficiency and efficiencies and also great collaboration between smaller schools. So it might not answer completely your question, Nader, but I think that it's important to know that the supervisory meeting is doing a great job with all of our schools to help and guide us, to make sure that we're meeting students' needs, but we're also working together, and so that we're not working in isolation to meet all students' needs.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So senator Weeks, and then I think we need to Okay.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: So the message is pretty clear. Small schools matter. Advocates of small schools, small schools, small schools, schools, community schools, special education at a local level, small schools, small schools. So we're wrestling with the concept of small schools. And we put them in two buckets. There is small by necessity, essentially driven by geography, and there's small by choice. We're trying to find the balance between really the small by choice. Small by necessity, we get that. Small by choice, community choice, that we're listening to and trying to receive feedback in. And I just wanted to because the theme here was very similar to the theme with the students earlier. We're not trying to merge schools. We're trying to merge admin. What we're trying to do is create a system of superintendents that have a larger footprint that they're looking at to make decisions, some economic, but primarily academic. What is the right size? What is the right fit for the schools in that particular region? And the problem that we're wrestling with is we have superintendents who are looking at that community. We have superintendents who are looking at that community of 10 schools or 10 towns and such. We're trying to figure out, well, what's the right scale for where superintendents should be looking at essentially what academic programs can we deliver for the students? That's kind of the essence of what we're wrestling with. We get it that small is beautiful. We get it. Everyone here is a Vermonter. But we're trying to find a balance between small by choice. Where is that tipping point of when we should try to affect it? Anyway, just wanted that's not a question. It's just kind of a summary of one of the things we're trying to wrestle. Thanks.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I'd love to keep this going but we can't. So in order to but thank you so much. You've all been articulate and very

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: helpful. So thank you. Thank you again. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we'll actually stay on because I think we're flipping right now just quickly to principles.

[Speaker 0]: Have a good rest of

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: your day. Thank you so much.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Thank you.

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: So we're back on.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You were all here when we introduced ourselves to the last panel. So think you were I

[Speaker 0]: have some sense. Sorry. Neither was last. Okay.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: You were on class. She went through the bank. That's The

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: US piece. So

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: we'll do a quick introduction. I'm Seth Bongartz. I represent the Bennington Senate District. I'm chair of

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: the Senate Education Committee. Steven Heffernan, Addison County District from Bristol.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Kesha Ram Hinsdale of Chittenden County.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Good afternoon, Dave Weeks representing Rutland County and I live in Prague.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Hello everybody, Terry Williams from Rutland County. So I think you're going go first actually. We're doing, by the way for the people on screen, is our is our time with principals from various parts of the district. So just introduce yourselves and move on.

[Speaker 0]: My name is Wendy Sethin, and I'm the principal of Rosh Hashim's Sagarichi And I District. Do you want to do full introduction? Sure. Okay.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Can you see the because I'm looking at the map. Yeah. The Rochester

[Speaker 0]: Stockbridge Unified District. So Rochester and Stockbridge, Illinois. So you're the one who is the shared principal Okay. Of both of those I'm Andrew Bowen. I'm the elementary principal here in Bethel.

[Andrew Bowen (Elementary Principal, Bethel & South Royalton Campuses)]: I also double E.

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: My name is Pierre LeBomb. I am not a principal share between two buildings. I'm a principal to a middle school, a white group of ballet schools. Although I draw students from more than just the two setting campus high royalty and Not all of them. That's all saying is seven different talents that show up in the big on my district.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Is your school here co located in this complex or are you at the old Chelsea?

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: I'm in what was formerly the Windham High School, Junior City High School.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And do you split your day, or

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: do do it day here, day there? How do

[Speaker 5]: you how do you do

[Andrew Bowen (Elementary Principal, Bethel & South Royalton Campuses)]: Yeah. So I start on Mondays here. Tuesdays are very, very central. Wednesdays end up here. Friday is what Monday is going start the day here. I'm very flexible, and everyone has been on the phone number.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I know you all have something you want to say to us.

[Andrew Bowen (Elementary Principal, Bethel & South Royalton Campuses)]: Yeah, so I do better with a lesson plan prepared with words. So I'm just going to read it, and ask all the questions. So I'm Andrew Bowen. I'm a late mom, fifth generation Vermonter, Vessel resident, and a parent of a second grader at Bethel Elementary School and a senior here at High School. I serve as the White River Elementary Principal for both the Vessel and Royal across two campuses, I serve 158 students in the family of Mount Vernon Elementary School and 190 students in Mount Vernon Elementary School, and work with around 58 faculty and staff, many of whom are shared across middle school and high school. Our two campuses elementary model works because of strong systems of support, we make shared leadership, collaborative teams, and clear commitment to work from early childhood to graduation. We also maintain strong partnerships with community organizations to meet the needs of our students and young. We are deeply committed to a full child education at our school, and we have invested in farm to school initiatives that have been at the time of sharing you've seen in our blue ribbon, in Rosen and the general network of Attlehall. We have winter activities, which are taken off in January when we come back, which includes swimming opportunities for our kindergartners and skating and skiing for everyone else. The One Planet After School program, which provides care until 05:30PM, also offers vacation programming and 50% of the summer camps. We have a strong arts programming, individual through partnerships with Claremark Center, Halifax, and Alliance Health. I would also be remiss not to also mention that even during COVID, we successfully delivered full virtual learning while continuing to support educators and families, and we are among the first to disclose which are in person learning well ahead of others. Academically, we are seeing strong results from our teachers' hard work and our intentional professional development due to performances above state averages in late in the early environment. Our campuses have been acknowledged by Vermont PBIS and are in Silver Status for the last school year, which is an acknowledgment of our campuses demonstrating high quality and computation of the PBIS framework. This year, we are actively addressing chronic absenteeism and working closely with outside agencies such as the South Brooklyn Health Center, HealthHUB, and BDS. At the same time, we are seeing increasing strain on the state home and and underserved communities that we rely on as crucial partners. Finally, we are proud of our fiscal stewardship.

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: Over the

[Andrew Bowen (Elementary Principal, Bethel & South Royalton Campuses)]: past five years, we have maintained lower tax rates and completed a major capital allocation of Al Mauding, There's a picture book by Generic Breach called A Fine Mind School, about a pencil who has a pride in his school. It culminates with the reflection that it bounces between structured learning and real life experiences like the best of his. As an educator and American children here, I would say confidence we have this really fine high school.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I didn't hear the name of the book because A fine, fine school. A fine, fine school. So this is like a

[Andrew Bowen (Elementary Principal, Bethel & South Royalton Campuses)]: book you can you can read. But I actually often get invited into classrooms at the read. Think it's actually hilarious. The principal's like, this is a fine, fine school. We should go to school on Saturdays. We should go to school on Sundays. We should go to school all year. And the little girl says, but I have to teach my dog how to sit, and I have to learn how to climb a tree. And that school is important, so our outdoor education is not the means are seeing opportunities come up and do the auto temperature fair at Alton Park. Yeah.

[Wendy Stetson (Principal, Rochester & Stockbridge Elementary Schools)]: Thank you. My name is Wendy Stenden. I'm also a Vermonter and went to sign school at Amigurh County in Penfold. I come from a family that shares severely. I'm currently the principal at Rochester and Southbridge Elementary School, which are pre school through sixth grade. When I first took this position, it was at the tail end of Act four zero six, and I was just full of Stafford's strength. After completing my second year, which was supposed to be smoother and then was COVID, so that was not true at all. I became the chair principal of both Rochester and Blackbridge Elementary School while also being the principal of the virtual academy that we ran for families who did not feel comfortable for their students to come back to in person. Prior to this role, I was also part of ACT forty six as I was the athletic director in high school social center teacher at what was Wake County. Since merging as a Rochester and Stockbridge Unified District, we've come a long, long ways for many reasons. But the most of the educational opportunities we've been able to provide our students that were not in any specific prior state. For example, we now have our classes one time a week throughout the entire school year. When I first started, students only had our class a total of 18 times here. We provide winter wellness, which includes skiing and snowboarding, lungeons, ice skating, snowshoeing, cross country skiing, basically anything else at no cost to the family, and it runs for six weeks throughout January and February. We now have outdoor education two times a week. This was not even an option prior to Burger. We also have a math intervention, something we did not have at all when I first heard. Literacy intervention was a part time position by an amazing person who worked like three and a half days a week. When we merged, we were able to provide a bit of a I would make the argument now that our test scores and our kids are such strong readers that we've been able to decrease that. We also are now able to offer two days a week of PE classes. At the time, it was only offered one time. And I was frequently teaching PE class because I wasn't able to fill up the fish when I first started. We also are farm to school and forest community. This has included local field trips around all of our local farming and partnerships with those areas. Gardening, we invite our families into the home with us. And then frequently, I'm able to multi age, not just multi age classrooms, but we will be prepaid through six in our we call it a multi group, gym, lunchroom, the space where everything happens, where everybody is cooking together. So from three year olds all the way to 12 year olds, 400% in a group together. There was no instrumental music, movements, or chorus, and we're now able to talk. We increased all these educational opportunities. And while some may say, well, that must have been incentive, I'm here to tell you that our state per spending like, per people spending is lower than the state average. In fact, last year, for this current school year, our people spending under the long term weighted average was $12,357 which was actually down from the 2024 to 2025 school year, dollars 12,004 and 70 sorry, excuse me, 12,470.12 per pupil. The largest portion of our budget annually is not staff. It's not health care. It actually is seven through 12 tuition. Because all our seven through 12 tuition students have a school diploma. We are able to manage that through the strengthening of our local middle school and high school within our SCA. And now, these are the two schools that a majority of our population should stop to. So through that partnership, we are able to keep that at a more predictable level than what it was when I first started. Other ways we've created cost saving measures that have also been effective is sharing roles and responsibilities across both Rochester and Southbridge Elementaries. So the following positions are shared between our two candidates: myself, the school counselor, our school nurse, our art teacher, our outdoor educator, music teacher, physical education teacher, librarian, math interventionist, and our special educator and special educator service provider. And within our partnership with White River Valley Supervisory Union, we're able to provide occupational therapy to students, physical therapy, as well as language. We've expanded all these educational opportunities, and we've been able to support all of our families by truly becoming a full service school. There's partnerships that we have created. First with our local health agency of Clara Martin, which provides a full rate clinician. We also have dental services through us called Health Club that comes two times a year and provides dental clinics to most families who cannot access dental services anywhere at home. And we have a partnership with Gifford Pediatrics, which comes one to two times a month right into our school. So students never have to miss. And if she travels, sometimes upwards of over an hour to access those services. In working in our partnership with Clara Horn, we've also been able to keep our out of district placement rate to 0%. We support families who have food insecurity through grant funding and other local opportunities by providing, and in fact, my amazing staff is putting this together right now to see, food boxes for household over extended vacation. We may be very small and fast, but we're nimble. And we support all our students' needs as they arrive. Fact, there's only twenty one percent of our students who are supported by either an IEP, five zero four, or targeted intervention plan. And this is due in large part to Jean and will provide early intervention as we provide full five day a week preschool programs for our 24 year old students within and outside of our school district. And this comes at no cost to the community. This is part of our school by day. At the end of the twenty twenty four-twenty twenty five school year, eighty six percent of our kindergarten through third grade students met or exceeded the standard in math, and seventy nine percent of our kindergarten through third grade students met or exceeded the standard in literacy. This is due to us being able to leverage partnerships within our supervisory meeting model and implementing instructional programming such as bridges or direct instruction literacy. So again, we're small and fat. There's 87 kids in Rochester and and there are 47 kids in Spanish. But please keep in mind, the nearest elementary school in the Portico College school is anywhere from 18 to 26 miles away from Rochester. And not just like a straight shot, because there is no such thing as a straight shot from Rochester, all right? That is either over one of two mountains. You can head to Brandon. You can come to Bethel. Or you could go through what's called the Gull, which is really fun when the weather changes on Route 100. I don't know if you've experienced that trouble. Up to the weights for those warrants. Trying to put your best year old on the bus for that. And I think you will hear that in echo when some of our community members come out today. So we pride ourselves on being a small school with a heart, and where all students are seen and have relationships not just with their classmates here, but multiple other adults in the building who are consistently providing updates to each other. And this connection in our additional support and educational opportunities are creating greater independence today. And I would not want your job for the world

[Speaker 6]: of what you're going on.

[Wendy Stetson (Principal, Rochester & Stockbridge Elementary Schools)]: And I know taxpayers are seeing the burden of what's going on. But keep in mind, it's going to be kids that are going have the greatest impact with whatever comes up. And that's why all of us are here, to make

[Speaker 5]: sure

[Speaker 0]: kids are kept in the board and in this decision.

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: Yes, Anne. All of those things are true. Thank you for your time and looking at this very critical issue for us.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Speak to you today that

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: the school would be very principal of a middle school. But to be very clear, I can't divorce that from who I am as a taxpayer facing nearly 40% increase on my taxes in a very different district. I can't separate it from my experience. I was a school board member in the Pyongarta era, co chair in the Act forty six steering committee. I've seen firsthand what happens when in a conversation you use words like consolidation, school closure, efficiencies and instead of going back into that sometimes circular conversation I want to answer something that your chair framed for me really what are we doing here to create opportunities for students because at the end of the day you're looking at scales and efficiencies and I appreciate your question senator of thinking that from a different lens what if this was a place that was attractive and indeed that's the system our leadership that we have been building the place that's attractive so I see increasing student numbers in our district like others. They're trying to build systems and programming. I personally have spent the vast majority of my build career in education from quite literally everything from the school custodian teaching through all grades multiple subjects teaching in college and then school board member. So I have some idea of what you're talking about when you're looking at shared staff or efficiencies or things that have an impact on different areas of the school. This particular school my school White River Valley Middle School and the White River Valley School was one of the first in Vermont to my knowledge to enter into building on the community schools model. I'd like to talk to you about how that was a vehicle for change. It fundamentally reshaped our approach. It certainly reshaped my approach in coming into this school through coordinating partnerships as I mentioned with our local community health and mental health agencies. We do more than just save we provide wraparound supports. We have very intertwining connected wraparound supports for students and families that have netted true results measurable results in terms of how we approach chronic absenteeism or student engagement bringing families back to the table to more than just comply with attendance to identify what are those barriers and obstacles that comes from the philosophy of being a community centered school where you're public facing. We are not unique in that mission. Other colleagues I have around the state, shout out to Bob DiGiulio at Hazen, has a similar approach of building on the community's strengths so that what we're nurturing student learning matches the kinds of job sets and skills we need industry that's going around to do the same thing we're all concerned about keeping Vermont talent in Vermont, ceasing the brain drain, keeping our youth safe and connection to a community where they can thrive. Just as importantly, the community school model really allowed us to extend learning opportunities earlier and more intentionally. The philosophy and the connections we made allowed us to bring work based learning to a seventh grader, to bring algebra to seventh and eighth graders to look for those opportunities that were more than just a one off that could pave a way for opening other pathways. In this community schools model we lean into the concept of flexible pathways that we know whether it's Principal Bowen or Stetson, my colleague to my left Principal Oeks. Our job is to create a meaningful pathway towards graduation to have sights on something that matters beyond just doing school, having aspirations exploration. So I will move to capstone projects here. An example of how we expand opportunities beyond our walls. I mentioned that more than just two towns sent to me more than just the run school district sent students to me and that's by intentionally recruiting working with partners throughout the SU but also becoming a hub for places like VTBLC where some of my students have never physically met, seen through Zoom and live multiple counties away. Some of your constituents attend my middle school hours away. I am left wondering how we can apply that kind of success and being a hub of learning. We're also talking about physically moving students across large businesses. That's the one I'm gonna pose. Innovation here is a really a core tenet of our work And what that comes through as is investment in seed more than just an acronym, we have a vibrant arts program to treat the whole child, the whole student, but an example of how that's thrown my middle school, we invested heavily in a maker space, a wonderful glittering crown jewel that has everything from hand belting, leather working, little wool sewing, embroidered machines, laser cutters, engravers, basic CNC machining skills and life skills and production skills that allow us to take a minds on approach and make it a hands on approach as well. That space is also a hub for another core tenant of our school how do we give back to this community that's given us so much. An aspect of the community schools that we try throughout Deep Central what are we giving back to these communities as a support us. It's important again that what we're trying to produce what we're trying to nurture our students with curiosity with resilience that will push through obstacles but also look at the community as something they want to be a partner. It's supportive of them, they have a two way relationship, they see job opportunities, they see advancement, evolution of our citizens, they see people thriving and more likely to stay with us. An important and hard to quantify aspect of the opportunities we create is how we have really changed my mind relationships with parents, caregivers, concerned community members. Whether it's a hosted event where we have a specific singular topic or a meeting for coffee and cannoli, making that last one off, I enjoyed the cannoli. We have multiple ways where people can give us meaningful feedback and to see meaningful change not nodding smiling and these parents and caregivers are not coming in combative here's the problem they're coming in saying we love what you're doing here but could be even better. A recent piece of feedback was we recognize you offer a lot of opportunities what are you doing for the parents that don't have all the wherewithal to advocate for how do we know what's out there so we know one of our missions is better broadcasting of what those opportunities are. Having the parents at the table, not as stakeholders but true partners in education and knowing that what we're doing best in it with the child comes through in how we are framing these conversations, not having multiple meetings or getting all the caregivers resources there at one time through those partnerships. At the same time, we are very realistic I think about current challenges. We continue to address chronic absenteeism through that close collaboration with our outside partners with the chart. These partnerships I stress they are essential, I know you know that. I'd like to point out they require proximity coordination long term sustainability to remain effective. We're seeing results after a couple of years of growing that partnership. I'm excited to think what that would look like five years down the road. I don't know how that would work if a student is 30 miles from their home in a different regional high school potentially, the doctor at the table is not their own caregiver. We currently have the practitioner working with the family at the table and conversation to make plans that affect change. Throughout all of these opportunities we created, we have remained committed to our leadership and our alignment to really responsible fiscal stewardship that were used intentionally, what the taxpayers are expecting what they're investing in we prefer to invest in structures that meaningfully change keep things safer offer more opportunities adding to the shop for their maker space to our amazing outdoor program. That's what this community invests in. And you see that when community members show up and invest in our space and cutting new mountain biking trails on my campus rehabbing a nine full disc golf course because one thing we are proud of our students are outside every single bank we use the word stewardship of the land the taxpayer finances of their future use that word conventionally. I hope that as you consider the future of public education in Vermont, I do encourage you to look very closely at how opportunity is created in practice. Whatever path we take, build through relationships, proximity to those resources, whatever they might be, you know, through that community investment. How distance, scale, and access affect students' readiness to learn and community sense of voice was a huge challenge to consider and I know you know that. Again, I thank you for your time. And I will leave with a pitch about our SU, our school district, our partnerships. You should be looking at how to add to us. We are a model. And we are built on models that are applied across the state. We put community needs at the front and center. Thank you. Greetings, thank you. As I said earlier, my name is Shane Elsie.

[Shane Elsie (Principal, White River Valley High School)]: I'm the first year principal here at White River Valley High School, and this is my seventh year working here at the South Grove campus. I've taken an interesting path to get here. I moved to Vermont with my wife back in 2000 after we graduated from college. So me and her family in Central Vermont. I started my professional career as a criminal author as a correctional officer. Having studied criminology in college, I really saw professional career in service, law enforcement, or something along those lines. And I quickly realized that I needed to do work further upstream than where I started out. And so I left that job and I came to work at the Clare Martin Center in Randolph, the local community mental health agency. And for two years, worked with adults and then I had the opportunity to transition into the child and family program where I began working at East Valley Academy, which is an improved independent special education school that serves students with social, emotional, behavioral challenges. It was there that I earned my teaching license. Spent eleven years at East Valley Academy, the last five as head of school, as well as the director of school based services for the Claremont Center. That's in that capacity that I first worked with principal Bowen and Superintendent Ken Arne. And it really helped me shape a strong understanding of the service teams in the state and the challenges that our schools face. Now back in the early 2000s, you could drive from Chelsea down to Tunbridge and South Royalton over to Bethel across the way through Stockbridge and Rochester. And there was four high schools there. I am not a Vermonter. I'm from Northern Maine. I grew up in a very rural school district of about the same size geographically as Whitewood throughout the Supervisory Union, but we don't have the same topographical challenges to make transportation the barrier that is here. But that really, that didn't make a lot of sense to me that we had so many schools in such close proximity. And I saw some of the challenges that our community faced. In 2015, I left the Academy to work at the Family Center of Washington County, which is the parent child center closer to home. It was a move that was good my family and personal needs. And I stepped into another field that, you know, was undergoing a

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: lot of change at the time.

[Shane Elsie (Principal, White River Valley High School)]: The Race to the Top Early Challenge Grant, So let's grow kids was coming on board with a lot of attention in early childhood field and a lot of promise about the science and investment in youth. And it was there that I became familiar with an analogy about systems and how a lot of our systems in Vermont are similar to old farmhouses. They start from the building of the house and then a barn. Then you had a milking parlor and an outbuilding. Then maybe you connect some of these things.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: You add an addition onto the house.

[Shane Elsie (Principal, White River Valley High School)]: And eventually you get a structure that continues to meet the needs. But if we had started from scratch and designed it with that forward thinking, probably isn't design we would have. And that was certainly my experience in the early childhood field at the time. So in 2019, when I decided to come back and see education, I really chose White River Valley High School because of all the work that I saw happen. Not only they had difficult conversations and a decision at the local level to merge schools, there were some forced consolidations in there as well. I understand. But they were really actively working to build MTSS system, volunteer student support, that really works to address the nature that we're doing the deans for all students. I'm really drawn to that and had just been so excited and proud of the work that we have done as a community in my time here. So, you know, I think there are three things that really make this school special and this community special to me. And I think that is the sense of community belonging that we've created, the connections and the partnerships that we have within our local community, those other resources, and the opportunities that we are able to provide. And so when I think about belonging, you know, I believe that our students need a strong sense of community and have deep connections with their teachers. This is a challenging time for our students. And they face a lot of challenges. And we are asking them consistently to be vulnerable, to put themselves out there in a world that isn't always that kind and supportive. And I couldn't ask for a more supportive, caring, and compassionate community than what we have here. And it's not just the teaching staff that work here that are paid professionals, as others have spoken to, it's really a community that comes out, that is involved, that is engaged and cares deeply in advocating for what's best students and for taxpayers. We've accomplished a lot to build that community, do some very unique things through our teacher advisory structures, the way that we develop community here at the high school through morning meetings, school wide activities, and traditions such as turkey trotts and outing days and spring and winter carnivals and other things that as Ms. Bowen talked about, the reference to her books, are important things that extend beyond just what we think of traditional academic days, but serve as that foundation of that relationship, that authentic connection that students and teachers are able to develop and foster that really allows us to transition to the classroom and be able to challenge and push students in the way that they need to. We also have a long history of community based learning here, where students are able to find meaningful opportunities to engage with learning outside of the classroom, exploring areas of interest, different careers, volunteer opportunities, supportive employment. A lot of students are earning credit for classes and work that they're doing out in the community and working on that through our White River Valley Portrait of a Learner Characteristics Traits So that they understand that connection between the things that we're asking them to do here in the classroom and what those look like once they move beyond high school and their careers. There's been a lot of talk about our community partnerships. Certainly community mental health, our local health centers, which is a health hub. The fact that we have care coordinators and sometimes even doctors participating in our MTSS systems where we're trying to problem solve and work around some of our most challenging and complex students and families is just absolutely amazing to me. And just a strength of our school. And then the opportunities that we've been able to create here, we have a flexible pathways department that 41% of our students are engaged in some form of flexible pathways outside of just the traditional courses studying classes that all high school students can look to be picked from. And that really allows them to customize their path, meaning to their interests, and find things that are meaningful, learning that they see themselves in, and where to get them engaged in reducing dropout rates. We also really are lucky and fortunate to be able to have partnerships with both Hartford area and Career Technical Center and the Randolph Career Technical Center that are two very different programs, one half day, one full day. And our physical proximity and ability to work with both schools provides a lot of opportunities for students to find the path that works best for them. Here our co curricular activities for a small room three school are pretty outstanding. We offer 17 varsity sports. We also have co op partnerships with other area schools. So if there are activities like football and lacrosse and things like that that we don't offer here, we still have students that are able to engage in and work in those things. Our performing arts department is absolutely pride and joy of the community. So we offer concert band, jazz band, chorus, drama, our National Honor Society, we have numerous clubs. There are, there is something for everybody to get involved in here. And so this is a wonderful community to work and teach in. It is very reminiscent of my own upbringing that really had a whole community of folks that was involved in raising the chicken. And I see a lot of those same things here. I'm just really proud to be a member of this community and happy to answer any questions that you all might have.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Start with a couple minutes but I want to pull the thread a little bit more on it. I had at least I had one principal back in my district say to me an elementary school principal with K through eight If it were up to me buses wouldn't run until 05:00. And because we do after school program parents wanted to pick their kids up early that would be fine. We have really good after school program because so often what kids are going home to isn't conducive to the next day.

[Speaker 0]: And

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: then thinking about some you alluded to summer programs and so there's you know there's the in school program and it's so important but then you've alluded to the high school level all the opportunities for perhaps after school, after completing their activities. We'll talk about that at the elementary level. What are you doing for kids? More than a lot of kids living in poverty, a lot of kids will have. And so thinking about after school and summer, what are you doing to augment that, the opportunity for those kids?

[Speaker 0]: Yeah. So in our research, which can really supervise your union wide at the elementary level, we have a couple on the plan in after school program, and around till, like, five, 05:30, depending on the location. Families who are supported through reduced lunch discounted rate, and scholarship opportunities so that we can structure the way they return. Through that, we have program leaders that come in and offer things like junior iron check is getting ready to start, or we have a partnership with the heart fund at a rebound that comes in one day. During the summertime, that runs approximately I think it's seven weeks on the front. Yeah. It takes up to seven weeks depending on the location. And that runs, I think, we share a site in the summer in Stockbridge in Rochester. We provide transportation transportation for we have one of these lines on in Rochester. It's one of Stockbridge. We run them up. And then pickup starts at 07:30 in the morning and run for the feeders by. And we then provide swimming lessons over the summer, do that programming. Field trip every week. They go somewhere. This is a learning opportunity. I agree. There's, like, partnerships with Bonshire comes in and does programming here with kids. So there's a lot of going places. There's a lot of people coming to us while we're here. There's also tutoring embedded, so we identify kids before we leave for the summer that may need an extra booster this summer to stop learning loss. So we have teachers that come in and pick up kids to do fun summer tutoring so we don't have to fly over the summer as well. We also offer a lot of food, so we're feeding kids, we're feeding families.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We heard about that cafeteria over the summer. So middle middle school has

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: a has more to throw in here. Oh, I'm I'm anxious to answer that. Sorry. We have a we have a middle school that offers, I think, more than a penny. We have after school club during the school year, almost every single day ranging from D and E gaming to art projects to film discussion, all kinds of club initiatives and pretty vibrant sports of our own. We have a contract with an outside bus agency to provide a second round of busing around thirty. We also work with them on other times should they remember to get students from this side of the mountain or the other side of the mountain, so to speak. We do not want food. Security can be a barrier to access. Through some of our community partnerships with the institute and UVM. We had interns building even more of our summer food service program. We heard about 10,000 meals leaving our campus. We're also working towards the point where we can make sure they don't see either going home with dinner the seating waiting for that 05:30 practice that might not have a full cover you get a meal just say there's other students sitting next to them so that everyone has that Those are just pieces of how we try to fill programming. Interesting to have them fill five but Yeah, a lot of our activities are more athletics, the U. Master school clubs, Weber Cat Scholar Squad is a student run study group. We also have various key clubs, as I mentioned earlier, the drama and play performances are very vibrant and draw a lot of students. And we do leverage the collaborative relationship with RCD, the bus company, to make sure students that have transportation challenges have ways to get back to their learning communities as well. Thank you. I we have maybe we'll take that.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Would also say

[Speaker 0]: that kids there's something for everyone, but there's many things for some kids too. So kids are doing multiple sports or engaging in many of these things. They're in the play and on the basketball. They're not just, I can only do one thing. So I feel like that's a real highlight for our kids here, that they can dabble and all. They don't just get cut because they're not the best. They can they can have a large brow, be shining and all.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We'll take one more question if somebody has one. We'll be a little bit behind if we do that but

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Well your fourth graders asked me for a water park. The State Farm should have

[Speaker 0]: a water park. We'll get that. We'll get get fire department

[Speaker 5]: down. Thank

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: you. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It really that was really helpful. Really deeply informative actually so thank you very much for the time. We'll switch right over to Stephanie, do want us to start with them?

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: Well, I was going first. I know Senator Ram Hinsdale had some questions in regards to how the supervisory meeting works and how the money flows to the supervisory meeting related. Why would a Bongartz vote here at the Labor Unified District not have voters voting on that vote in examining Chelsea. And so one of the things you heard me speak to that I think is important is that the supervisory structure provides for local governance and instilling local control and oversight of schools. And frankly, would say to you, I'll put up our ed spending, I'll put up our academic scores against all the different SDs and SDs across the state. And one of the reasons I think we do well is accountability measures that are in place by our local school district boards and the local citizens that I go to and report to monthly with the board. And that when we vote on our budgets, I'm looking them in the eye and talking to them about how our city's performing, and they get to ask questions. And they're voting under school budgets from the poor majority of them. Only the way we're in my district uses us total ballot in Stratford right now. But there's major turnout for our town meetings even there to get those questions answered prior to voting. And so the way that it works here is that the White River Unified District right now has 83 tuition students that come to us from across the state, a majority of which come from this desk. And we announced our tuition at $19,900 And when that money comes in, when we're announcing that tuition, those funds are helping support not only the program the students receive, but also the facility as well. And what that's allowed us to do is we've been able to increase tuition dollars into this White River Unified District. We've been able to expand programming that you've heard principals and teachers talk about, and also improve our facilities. And the bond did not pass. But yet, we've been able to put money away in our reserves. And the board just took action last night to do a $2,300,000 project that we didn't need to bond to bond more in order to do. And then we're able to use our capital reserve funding to help offset as long as as well as private donors that we have about $750,000 to make that happen. So that gym that you see behind you will be totally recreated into a performing arts center next summer. And all the security actions work will be done in the HVAC work that we have planned for this district. Yes, Senator.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So and I'm sorry, have to leave in five minutes. I hear that, but you're also a great person to educate us on where we find value in supervisory unions if we were to allow for them in a new construct. And getting tuition dollars from a handful of students from a town is very different than having that town take part in bonding for school facility, right? I don't feel I don't know if I'm not understanding, but if you have a choice town, and they decide where to send their dollars, that whole town is not bonding for the local high school like the towns that do not have choice and are supporting that local high school. That seems patently unfair. That's not equal.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: Well, the if Stratford was to bond for their school, which they did choose to do, White Bear Unified District would also not have a vote in improving their infrastructure with Stratford.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So why?

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: Because we're separate school district entities. So voters get to oversee their local school district budgets.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I think I think if we're finding any value in supervisory unions versus districts, it has to be facility efficiencies, and it has to be towns paying equal amounts for things like a regional high school.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: I would say to you that when you look at large multi town school districts, which I think you can provide data on, that they tend to spend excessively more money per student than multitask supervisory units. And I believe part of the reason for that is fiscal responsibility and involvement in those local school district boards and communities around decision making. And reminder, you all know this, the Ed Fund is a statewide Ed Fund. People in Royalton didn't get to vote for the bond in Burlington, but they are also helping put the bill for the bond in Burlington.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Right. So it just then I just don't see the value of a supervisory union unless we say this is the high school you all are are paying for. That's how we get to regional high school.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: Well, I see a value in not saying to someone who lives in Granville that they have to pay for a high school year, then their child doesn't attend. And I don't think it makes sense to have a student in Granville, which touches Warren, to have to be on the bus to come to this high school when their family travels either over to Middlebury or up the Valley Footwearbee up to Harlem. And that's where I see the value of choice for rural districts.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I guess I what I'm not clear on is the whole community is paying for the high school, not just the tuition student.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: Only the taxpayers of Bethel and Wellington are voting and improving this high school's budget.

[Speaker 0]: So isn't Because they are

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: a capable of operating district.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But if we let communities keep choice within supervisory unions, I don't know how we say your whole town is let out of paying for having a high school.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: They pay for that via their tuition dollars.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: Tell me how much they pay more for the facility.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: We charge 99 per seat. I have other public schools next to my district that is charging as much as 27,000 per student. Have independent schools in this SU, like Sheridan Academy, that are paid about 20 to charge of 22. Then for the Academy, that's charging 23. Harper, that charge is close to 25. And so what I would say is that the real question is how do we create accountability to districts for student achievement and for pupil spending? And one of the simple things I think we could have done in the meantime as we looked at Act 73, and talking about merging and how public dollars follow this, is really looking at what is the means for the excess spending threshold penalty, And really looking at how are we gonna hold accountability to districts of how much they're spending per pupil. I also think that we should be looking at saying that there's measures in regards to student performance, measures in regards to community engagement that we should be measuring. If school districts are not performing well in those areas, that we ought to be going in and providing serious technical support to right the ship around that, much like we had when Secretary Harry Holcomb, the secretary, in regards to what happened around The United States after No Child Left Behind. And I would say to you that the choice districts in this last few, a majority of them didn't ask for choice. Montpelier said they were too small and they had to close their eyes. And that resulted in them having choice. They did what Montpelier said they should have done during Act 46. Chelsea didn't wanna close that high school. Montpelier told them they had to. And now what I'm hearing, senator, is that Montpelier should then say that you also then, if you live up on the Washington line and have a closer high school in Williamstown, that you should be forced to come down to Montana from the high school. I don't think that's right. That's not what they asked for.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I don't know that anyone's saying they should be forced to go to a specific high school, but every community should be paying for a high school.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: And they do through their tuition dollars. I'm happy to sit down and show you how that finance works, but when a high school sets their announced tuition, they are also figuring in the facility center.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But you said the biggest part of your budget is money being tuition out of this district.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: I never

[Speaker 0]: Okay.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: No, what one of my principals said was, is that tuition dollars of which we also receive, because the majority of your students come to this district, is what's driving her budget, right? Because she has limited teachers in her K-six sections. She now, because Rochester closed their high school workforce, sent tuition out. And a majority of her kids are coming here, so

[Speaker 6]: they are helping pay for the

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: facility we're gonna build an

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: ace on. She just doesn't have to fall into that because the tuition's announced.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: So once again, what I feel like I'm hearing is that the foundation formula is the cost containment measure, because we'd no longer be sending $22.24, dollars 25,000 to Academy. We're sending the same amount.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: You are not going to hear me say that I have a major concern with the approach to a foundation for the one. Getting the rates correct and ensuring that they make sense, we need to do some little bit of research on. Because I think part of why we got here was that we didn't get that right during PAC 01/1927. And that 5% spending threshold that was put in place with that, that people are going to be penalized, folks abused. And that's how we got to this fiscal crisis, coupled with folks using one time dollars during COVID funding times to add positions that they didn't have a long term plan, but how to pay for it. I would also say to you, like many of my colleagues, we agree, Senator, there's too many superintendents.

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: Agree with you. Can you say

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: that again? There's too many superintendents. And I say that because I live in Callis and I drive here to work every day. And on my way from Callis to when I get on the interstate in Montpelier, I drive through three supervisory districts, which is a way less square miles than I oversee right now. And so I would agree with you, and I'm not picking on it. They know I say these things. Is that we need to look at right size. What I worry about when we unilaterally right size it with SD Senator, is that a school board member in Parity doesn't understand what's important for a student in Rochester. And I worry about these large STs being that that school board member in Perry says it's really easy to close that small school in Rochester. But what they don't realize is Grandville Hancock kids have nowhere to go to school then through that valley, all the way from Tillington up to Warren. And that's the worry that I have of those large SCs. Can I just ping So him on

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: isn't that the role so in our world, that's the role of government operations? They're the guys who figure out what the structure of the school board will be, like who represents who, so that if there is a larger district and that there's a heavy inside that district like Berry, but there's small towns and strong, how does that representation be factored in? I don't think we're so worried about that, because that's a conversation about how to represent rewards that will hopefully result in a fair representation of large communities, small communities simultaneously.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: With all due respect, I think for most folks in the old town, myself included, who lives in the school district trying to close the school, and it's the largest it's been in over a decade, unilaterally without a vote in the town. Actually, school board chairs that they should move the kids to another school, only keep pre K in Dallas. Then once the parents see that that worked well, then we'll do a vote in the town close, which is not what the article said. Actually, this is the important thing can tell us about that tonight. The worry I have, Senator, is why I said that, is that I don't trust that we will necessarily get that right and we'll have fair representation. And I think that that's what lots of folks in Beaumont are scared about right now. They trust local governance and global representation. They struggle to be convinced that those wards are gonna have their best interests for each one of our current rural district boards. And I think if we could build that trust, that would be helpful. But examples like not following articles of agreement, you closing callus and just beat the one grade in school by a local unified school district. And again, what you heard me say, which I think was not our best approach, closing rocks very unilaterally when we're going pass the budget, that doesn't build trust. We've not done a good job in regards to education and governance when we act that way.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Yeah, so you're absolutely right. The first place I ever heard the word consolidation or merger was superintendents. So what I'd like to get from you is, for the benefit of your experience, the pros and cons of you as a superintendent having over a larger footprint as opposed to the 10 communities you you have now? Can you just pros and cons of Yeah. So let's say yeah.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: I'm gonna go back to, like, the example of CT map, right, that was going to add Orange Southwest to this, you know, to a Supervisory Union framework. I believe they had to include that for, and if you look at the RTCT, our regional tech center, that it probably would have encompass CVSU, which is in Echo Valley, Orange, Washington. So I would have 16 towns, four counties, essentially from Exit 2 to Exit 5. The biggest downfall of that would have been my ability to have firsthand knowledge in regards to where we're running efficient or where we need to improve as compared to what I have right now. I can be in a majority of my schools every week. The students know me, some of you had lunch today with the kindergartners. That gives me firsthand information to make important decisions around how to improve programming and to make sure that we're being fiscally responsible with the tax dollars we collect. You know, I think that right sizing it, our board has already voluntarily reached out to some other member districts. We submitted that public comment to the task force committee and said, we're willing to get bigger. Do I think that we could get bigger by four more districts? No. But could we add another district or too long that geographically made sense? Yes, the SU Board said they're willing to do that. What we gotta make certain though that we're providing the right size not to get to systems that rely on middle management bureaucrats in order to oversee that accountability measure. And I worry about if we get too big and don't have the right size, we're gonna result in a lot more middle management in order to oversee those things. And that to me is not how we do our best work. I also think that one of the things that we should be doing is taking a really hard look at, you know, what is the right size in regards to management at the SUSD level. If you go to my website, you're not going to see a transportation coordinator or someone that oversees my operations. You're gonna see a fairly lean mean machine where we expect folks to work incredibly hard in the instance.

[Speaker 0]: Thanks for that Earlier

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: it came up that some of the choice high schools in the area are doing dual enrollment with Dartmouth. Meanwhile, have one AP Calc student. You said you were working on an agreement because we're not I don't think soon we're gonna let them leave the state with those dollars.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: Well, Dartmouth College is early college. So in regards to Act 73, I don't think it hits anything in regards to early college or how those dollars flow. Our kids also have the opportunity to do that too through Dartmouth. And some had taken part. Assume we talked about here earlier, just within his schedule, he didn't exactly make sense for him. You know, in regards to our AP courses, we're right now looking at, you know, right sizing the numbers in those courses as well, but also try to provide as many opportunities as we can, while we try to also attract neighboring tuition students. You know, one of the things I've said to some senators in Montpelier is, one of the things I really valued by having some choice districts in this SU is it forced this building to get better. Because there was some competition provided that we need to take a hard look in the mirror and say, for the White River Unified District student, we need to do better. But we could use those tuition dollars to reinvest to do better. But it also, we had to say, why is it that we're not attracting students, the students driving by us to go to another public or private high school? And we had to do a lot of soul searching to say, there are some things we can do better. And I'm proud of the fact that I think we've been making a lot of gains to do those things better. And what that has resulted is we had about 35 tuition students in 2020. We now have 83. And at nineteen point nine, that's a major bucket change that we can reinvest back in the system, which has also helped keep these guys' tax base down. There's some materials in there that you were provided, a lot of materials about our academic data indicators, and also our finance data indicators. Within this last few South Wales, some taxpayers are paying 12.1% less in their tax rate than they were five years ago. That's way different than the 40% average I heard during the December 1 tax led. There are some things that can be learned. This just idea that unilaterally getting bigger without really researching what makes sense, and frankly holding people like me accountable, I don't think we're gonna see it's gonna work. Superintendents need to be held accountable. We all want it. I want it. And I'll tell you that leadership is important. From the board perspective to the superintendent perspective down to anyone that's working in the building. You'll see here, I hope you've got us when you walk through the halls, we are committed to kids. And that we're flexible. It's all hands on deck. We're gonna work together, and we're gonna do what's best to serve kids. That comes with accountability. And we just got to figure out how to better hold folks in my position accountable, including me.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: I just want to say it from an education policy perspective, it does concern me if we start to lose AP courses on a campus and encourage kids to do dual enrollment, and that was never the intention. And, you know, we have to worry about that, especially from an equity perspective, who can get off campus and go somewhere else for those classes. So it does concern me.

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: I can't speak for right back

[Pierre LaBombard (Principal, White River Valley Middle School)]: from Academy, they eventually search here

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: in Academy, I don't wanna see them. At this campus, we're still offering AP courses. But I will also say as someone who is a First College graduate, generation graduate, dual enrollment for some students when I was in Huntsville and Williamstown and their ability to go to the millage was amazing. I thought that that provided a pipeline and the ability to trust so that we could foster first generation college graduates. Don't know if they wouldn't take the opportunity to pursue that on their own if they didn't have that high school to come back to safely. So I agree with you. It's not supposed to be replacing a thief, but I would also say that it does serve a lot of students, specifically students who might not have the family support or wraparound support from a greater family network to get to college, allow them to have that opportunity to set sales for.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Other questions? I think you can cover everything I had. And how are your kids how are the I think one question I asked when when you got students coming from eighth grade to high school, what percentage are at grade level for How you doing grade level for math and reading?

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: So across the SU, Senator, we are above the state average in mathematics out of five out of the seven grades tested. In literacy, it's three out of eight. We're doing some work in literacy right now, and I'm giving you all the different grades across, you know, that are assessed. We're close in some of those others, but we, you you heard some of the teachers talk about a real focus on literacy. There has been a major focus in literacy in this SU over the last four years to address that. And then science worked 12% above the state average in science in all three different grades.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Anything else? Thank you. We're taking a Do you

[Jamie Kinnarney (Superintendent, White River Valley Supervisory Union)]: have a little break? There a little break? We got some music that's gonna perform. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: Go for it. Okay. So yeah.