Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Speaker 0]: We are live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, we are live, everybody. Good afternoon. My name is Seth Bongartz. I represent the Bennington Senate District and I'm chair of the Senate Education Committee. I'll have the other members introduce themselves in a minute.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Sorry, we're not live yet.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, not live. You have to hear me say it again.

[Speaker 0]: Now we are live.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Okay, now we're live. Okay. So again, my name is Seth Bongartz. Represent the Bennington District and I'm Chair of the Senate Education Committee. We had a couple of members had to leave early. Senator Ram Hinsdale and Senator Hashim were here earlier. And just to give you a quick overview, we spent, this is our, we visited five districts across the state, toward the end of the summer, or now nearing winter here. We tried last year a couple of times to get out of the building during the session, visit schools, and because it is so hectic, we just gave up. Not going to happen. So we're doing it now before the session starts to get to interact with schools and with members of the community. We started off we visited Canaan School, one of the tiniest schools in Vermont in the Northeast corner of the state. If there's a school in Vermont that is truly small by necessity it's probably Canaan and that was incredibly informative and then we went next to Woodstock and then we went to Rutland we went to CVU and now we're here for our fifth of the five At each stop, we've had a student panel, a teacher's panel, and today we had a principal's panel from across the district. What we're really trying to do is step back a little bit from the immediacy of the issue a lot of you have on your mind and focus on how we provide excellent educational opportunity for every Vermont student. That's what we're talking about here, is providing excellent opportunity for every Vermont student. And we try to, with these visits, do it in different settings, very different settings. Today, we're at a school serving a very rural area. So the sort of focus here has been a little bit, how do you achieve excellent educational opportunity? What are the challenges? What are the opportunities? What are the schools actually doing to embrace every student? And we're hearing loud and clear across all of these districts that that's actually what's going on. We heard it loud and clear here today, the notion of embracing every student and trying to provide the kind of opportunity that we're looking for. So we've ended each one of these with an opportunity for the public to come in and speak to the committee because you don't always get that opportunity. And by the way, one of the great things about we've been able to do with these is it's during the session we don't get to hear as much from students, from teachers, and even principals as we do more like superintendents and some of the advocacy organizations. So it's really been wonderful to be able to take the time and hear from the whole range of people much closer to the ground than we sometimes get a chance to do. So that's one of the reasons that we did it. So with that, so we have this week, as we said, we have enough people signing up so that we think we can get away with doing three minutes, which is a little bit more than we've done in some. But why don't we start by introducing

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Hello, Steve Heffernan, Addison County District.

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

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Terry Williams also representing Rutland County and I live in Polk.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: For what it's worth? I live in Manchester and you live in Bristol. So with that, I think, if left anything out that

[Dr. Joshua Boyd]: I should have mentioned,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: no? Okay. Then why don't we, take our first witness? I'm just gonna do them in the order that they're got put in front of me here. And by the way, this chair is for the person speaking. That chair is for the on deck speaker. So I'll try to keep trying to give the on deck person a cue to come up because it then makes it move a little bit more quickly. And I think we would have you have you stand and use the microphone, but with the, the on deck has worked has worked pretty well in other ones. So we're gonna start with Greg Hughes. Yeah, Greg Hughes. And then on deck is Joshua Boy. You know. So by the way, in each instance, if you could just start by giving us your name and your account of residence, then you have three minutes. So we're trying to again keep this focus we're trying to focus on providing excellent educational opportunities for every Vermont child.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Afternoon, senators.

[Greg Hughes]: Thank you for coming to the White River Valley. My name is Greg Hughes. I live in Bethel. And I'd like to point out to you that the White River Valley Supervisory Union is a case study that fully supports the recommendations of the remote redistricting task space. We have been two supervisor unions and we merged into one. We voluntarily closed four high schools. Bethel and Royalton formed a unified school district. And our results, my guess, at this point is, you've realized they've been quite impressive. Our enrollments are up, they're way up. Our cost per student is down. Our academic offerings have expanded to the point where we now offer 18 more than we hadn't done in the past. And most importantly, our tax rates have stabilized. The taxpayers of Bethel and Royalton have not had the tax increases that have plagued the rest of the state in the past five years. Do we still need help? Yes, we do still need help. And that's where the Cooperative Education Service agreements that were recommended by the task force would help us. It would help us down the road in the process of reducing our special ed expenditures, our professional development expenditures, and our office expenditures. There's a lot of cumulative savings that can be generated for us in this process. So I'd like to repeat that the Vermont Redistricting Task Force was successful. They've given the state a very viable path forward and the recommendation should be seriously considered by the state. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: On

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: deck is Sarah Rutland.

[Dr. Joshua Boyd]: Thanks for meeting with us today. Coming from a perspective of recent transplant and also apparent and a WRBS award member. My name is Doctor. I live in Stockbridge, Vermont, small town of up and around 800 people. We moved from Boston a year and a half ago after a year of BGS, where great reputation for higher education, not so much public education. First, Sam saw my five year old son get bullied and watch this beautiful, wonderful personality view. We toured here two years ago in Stockbridge and met Lindy Destin where she shared this environment of a cousin like atmosphere. And that's exactly what my son has experienced. Kids of all ages uniting with one another and bonding and acting more like cousins and family members and older kids men, mentoring younger kids as a schoolboy and just watching him absolutely thrive in this environment. And so haven't we as a family. Just in this town, is many transplants that similar story that I think is being overlooked that people are coming here by choice, young people with families, something that Vermont is very aware of. We're getting older, we need fresh blood in young people in this community. And that's what we found as we've been embraced by the small local count of Stockbridge. And as a school board member, I can say confidently that WRBS is not part of the problem. We are part of the solution. We are small scrapping, but efficient. Our district spends below the state per pupil average and are taxed with state stable banks and responsible WRBS leadership. Our district is financially responsible for the fiscal year 2026. Our projected tax impact is just point 0106% in stock. The schools, our schools provide students with access to health care, dental care, mental health services right on-site. Otherwise, we'd have to be traveling mountains in order to get these services. Instead of addressing the true drivers of rising costs in health care, big cost health care and insurance systems are really the driving force of the increased tax that we find. And also, we need to look at the tax system as a whole, especially property values and how we fund education. Sixty to seventy five minute ride in unsupervised bus rides away from their communities and families is not the answer for our kids. Our kids who have just gotten through COVID, we don't need to put this generation for reading for. That's all I have time for. Thank you very much.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Hannah Prince is on deck.

[Speaker 0]: Hi. My name is Sarah Rutland and I come to you today as chair of the Stratford School Board and a member of the White River Valley Supervisory Union. RSU is a high functioning Supervisory Union as I believe you have seen today. I believe the reason we are successful is because of the type of leadership our team provides. We support our faculty, help by giving them time to collaborate with each other, to learn and to troubleshoot. Our faculty has data about their students that I wish when I had been a primary teacher, they work collaboratively and they help our students excel. We work together across the SU. We support each other across the SU, and we learn from each other across the SU. Creating large districts and SUs will not solve the economic challenges in our state, and there is no data to support this. The governor and the secretary of education have not provided any research to support their claims of cost savings. What it will do is create chaos and burnout our SU staff and all that will negatively affect the learning outcomes of our students. I totally believe the redistricting task force intended to create up to three maps when they started in August. The reality that they reluctantly learned was that forced mergers in huge districts would not work and would not save money and would not increase student outcomes. The governor and the legislative leadership can say that it will, but they are wrong and they can't show us data that shows that it will work. I am a seventh generation Vermonter. I graduated from Newton School in Stratford. I graduated from Montpelier High School in Montpelier and the University of Vermont. I taught elementary school for fourteen years in Vermont and New Hampshire. I then went on to work for the National Education Association in New Hampshire and then eventually to the NEA nationally. I have been involved in my whole life in some part of the educational system. I believe in Vermont. What the governor and the secretary of education have presented will not solve economic issues in Vermont. It is shortsighted and frankly will hurt Vermont's small towns, which make up most of Vermont. I will fight to save our small rural schools. I believe that the Redistricting Task Force delivered us a workable solution for Vermont. Please do not support the Governor's proposal. Make him show us the projected savings and outcomes and stand with the redistricting task force. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And, Terry is on deck.

[Speaker 0]: Hi there, folks. My name

[Hannah Prince]: is Hannah Prince, and I'm coming from Softbridge. We've lived here for nine years now. We had an older child that finished out school with Softbridge, and we now have our eight year old over at Softbridge. I cannot say enough. We come from Louisiana, and I came from a five A school myself, thousands of students feeling like a number. What I received here in Southbridge and the surrounding region, it's just a feeling, a real true feeling of community. I'm part of the PTO as well as the farm and forest community initiative that we have, we're starting that and the kids are excited. We have educators that are excited to carry on and go on with this program. I really ask you guys to consider our communities and just the real value of

[Multiple public commenters (ID reused)]: community.

[Hannah Prince]: Yeah, I really thank you guys very much.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Kathy Galuzzo is on deck, and while I'm speaking I'll note that Senator McElwee has joined us, is here for the public comment portion of the day. So, your honor.

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: My name is Carrie Kellad Delalla. I'm a retired social education teacher, and I was, in my last role as a public school teacher, I was the department chair of special education at Salt Lake High School in Barrie. I live in Chelsea, where I'm on the select board. I'm not here as a select board member, here as a community member, and somebody who's very concerned about what's happened to our small rural schools. I'm probably going

[Speaker 0]: to echo what most of

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: the other people I've already spoken to here, but I don't know that you would find many people in Chelsea who regret the decision to not fight the closure of the high school in Chelsea. I think the high school was the heart of the community and generations of families attended. There's so much that was lost. It was the heart. It was the absolute heart of our town, where people gathered for sports events and arts events and musical productions. It's so fragmented now.

[Speaker 0]: It's so fragmented. There was

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: a family that, in the first year of the consolidation, I knew a family that had a child in elementary school, middle school, and high school. And both parents were. One of them was an educator. So the logistics of getting those three children to school, want to talk about impact on education. You want to talk about how exhausted kids are by the time they get to school, and for spending time on buses, and time at the end of the day on buses, not with their families, not in their school community, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There are so many things. I watched, though I was department chair, I had a caseload of 26 students who were in out of district placements. 26 students cost the Barry School District $2,300,000 a year. They were, I had students that were placed in programs as far as Alabama. I had a student in Massachusetts and Connecticut because the communities in Vermont couldn't sustain, or they couldn't maintain the needs of those children. So rather than I just feel like if communities came together to pool their resources but not dismantle their schools, They could be doing so much more for children who need more, who need something else. The scores aren't going to go up because you put a kid on a bus for a longer period of time. The schools aren't going to improve because you've got parents worn down from having to work all day and having to drive the distances that they have to go to many different schools to be sure you can attend. Just feel like, as the woman who spoke before me and the woman from Stratford said, the heart, the heart, consider the heart of these communities. Consider what you're dismantling when you take away those schools, please. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Nelly Mendal is on deck.

[Speaker 0]: Hello, I'm Cathy Paluzzo. I am lifelong member, a resident of Tumberge, Vermont, and I'm also the Vagra Rovelli Supervisory Chair and Chair of the Tumberge Award. So if you guys have any questions for me, please ask. But I would like you to consider not just the long bus rides for students.

[Nelly Nenzow]: For me, it was really important to

[Speaker 0]: me to participate in all

[Jamie Daniel]: of

[Speaker 0]: my children's activities, like basketball games and after school programs, and to be able to be there and be a supportive parent. Most of us people who live in a small community commute for work to somewhere, so a lot of times, the school, if we're putting kids on bus rides further away, that puts them further away from where we were. So now parents are not able to participate or join in any of those things, because now it's even further away. So it doesn't seem fair that that would be asked of us. And I think that if you take a look at our

[Jamie Daniel]: supervisor union, we do a

[Speaker 0]: really good job of working together. Our talents, we've been doing this for twenty years now as a support member, so

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: we've got the following set.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Hudson, I can't quite read it. Right. Rainey is on deck, and I will also note that senator Clarkson has joined us. Oh. Sitting until the same. Wrong senator White.

[Speaker 0]: Hi, I'm Nelly Nenzow. I'm the

[Nelly Nenzow]: president of the Stockbridge KTO, local business owner and a lifelong Vermont resident. I grew up attending a rural school and I'm here to ensure that my children have the same opportunity. Our school is far more than a place where lessons are taught. It is where children are nurtured, supported,

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: and known as individuals.

[Nelly Nenzow]: It is the heart of our town, where families gather, community events are held, and children grow up feeling seen and valued. In a rural community like ours, the school is the last remaining public institution that connects people. Closing or merging it would not simply reorganize education, it would fundamentally weaken the fabric of our town and the learning environment for our children. From a fiscal standpoint, our school is run responsibly. Our per pupil spending is reasonable and reflects the realities of rural education, not excess. We have been careful stewards of public funds, and there is no evidence that closing our school will result in meaningful long term tax savings for our town. Most importantly, this decision directly affects the daily lives and well-being of our children. My own children are seven and 10 years old. Forcing them to spend more than two hours each day on a bus, often without supervision, is neither developmentally appropriate nor safe. That time comes at the expense of learning, family connection, rest, and participation in extracurricular events. Long, unsupervised commutes place an unnecessary burden on young children and undermine the conditions they need to succeed. At its core, this decision is about how we choose to educate our children and what kind of future we are building for them. Education works best when children feel safe, supported, and connected to their school community. Investing in accessible community based education affirms that every child matters, regardless of geography. Strong rural schools help raise engaged citizens, sustain local communities, and ensure Vermont's future is rooted in care, responsibility, and opportunity. Thank you for your time.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Katie Stiles,

[Hudson Ren]: Hi, My name is Hudson Ren. I'm 18 years old, I have voted to be Prince of Vermont. In last November, voters asked for property tax relief. They did not ask for a top down approach for consolidating education systems. We learned our lesson with Act 46 about ten years ago, where, yes, it saved money in some cases, but in other cases, it didn't. Yet Democratic leadership and the governor passed Act 73 without addressing those fundamental costs, the cost drivers, and that is continuing to drive up our property taxes. Voters are going to be pissed. I can guarantee you that at the polls, people will remember that the taxing go up every two years because we've kept taking the stand down the road. We need to actually address the cost drivers and not the consolidation isn't going to save money, but the BOCES model is an option, so let's take that option and run with it that will actually give some immediate pathway to our constituents. Thank you.

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: Hi. Now you're on.

[Phoebe Styles]: My name is Phoebe Styles, I'm a parent on the CTO, part of our Farm and Forest Initiative and a business owner in Stockbridge, Vermont. And I'm deeply concerned that the most consequential debate about public education in our state has been reduced almost entirely to finances, particularly when the finance assumptions being cited don't reference what is actually happening in a rural district like ours, which is one that is small by necessity, while also being one of the largest geographically. In the WRVICU, five of 10 towns saw decreases in residential tax rate for fiscal year twenty fifth, ranging from 12.6% to 1.1%. And two of those towns, Southbridge and Rochester, also reduced per pupil spending this year. And I know this because I attend our local town meeting and budget vote, here at Elkindorf, our school admins actively do to operate our budgets, to avoid overage penalties, and to deliver for our kids. The claim that small rural schools are driving rising education costs is typically not supported by the concrete data from ARGUS. Just as important is who our rural schools serve. Increasingly, our school communities are made up

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: It's always just a general, it's a Ben.

[Phoebe Styles]: Increasingly, our school communities are made up of families who have recently relocated to Vermont. Families directly contributing to the state's modest population growth at a time in Vermont was rapidly aging and actively trying to attract and retain younger residents. Eliminating access to local schools puts that fragile progress at risk and undermines one of the strongest incentives for families to settle here. Irene was relocated to Vermont, New York City eleven years ago, and now raise my son and operate three businesses here, all of which are among the many contributing to the $750,000,000 in additional statewide education funding, and we do so well because we believe in a strong public education system. But that investment must include maintaining access to well functioning rural schools. Closing rural schools and are lowering per pupil costs, reinvesting locally and sustaining our communities based on arbitrary classroom sizes as proposed by Act of Human Grade would not just harm families and our kids, it would actively weaken the very rural communities whose residents and businesses are helping support Vermont's education system as a whole. It feels telling that our rural district is among the last to do a bit in this process, while potentially being one of the first field of consequences to get these proposals going forward. Rural communities are often discussed on the abstract, because policy is shaped by averages and efficiency model, rather than lived realities. So here is the lived reality you should take away from the WRBM view. Our schools should be a model district. We have fiscally responsible leadership who are fiercely dedicated to our kids and an involved and engaged community committed to our local

[Speaker 0]: Members of the funded education committee, thank you so much for being here today. I come to you before you as an educator, parent, member of the Stratford School Board and White River Valley Supervisory Union, an investment member of my community. Our school is the heartbeat of our community. I'm a transplant, ever certainly having spent twelve years in Alaska, where I was witness to education being gutted. It was absolutely heartbreaking to see the lesser care and attention extended to the students that were attending. Education was a factor in my move when I was offered a position here. I understand that this attempt at education reform is centered around saving costs. While I agree that costs and spending are high when education reform is driven by cost savings and not improving our education system, then the basis is already flawed. High health care costs and other driving factors must also be addressed at the root. Saving money is the byproduct of a thoughtful measured reform process. It happens when you work with communities to figure out the best pathway forward, not by trying to force a half baked vision. Efficiency and evolving our education system should not be an answer thought. Where is the evidence that the governor's proposal will actually work? The process is causing harm now and will cause harm in the future, whether it's forcing longer bus rides to students or results in a loss of local school services. The long term impacts are not measurable by simple metrics. We need an educated Vermont to endure and thrive for the future. This attempt at reform is highly unpopular, and yet the governor and secretary of education continue to push it in spite of the evidence that it will not work. Vermonters should not be treated like children who don't want to take medicine that they're told is good for them when they see evidence to the contrary over and over again. The Bongartz are educated, considerate, and measured from a farmers to artisan and tradesfolk to academics, and sometimes a combination of all of those things. Each brings to the table their own wisdom and perspective, especially those in rural communities. If you want to look at efficiencies and savings, why not have an assessment done to determine existing models that do this well? My supervisory union is a stellar example of how this can work while keeping our rural schools running. I am proud to be a part of that union. I have test scores right here showing us outperforming the one averages as a result of all the hard work our leadership and members have done to bring us here. As an educator, I am baffled by the governor and secretary of education's determination

[Chris Jarvis]: to

[Speaker 0]: not let go of this proposal when the redistricting task force has already offered taken our feedback into consideration and offered a tangible and workable way forward. Please do not support the governor's proposal. Please hear what we are telling you. Those are pursuing positive results every day as a result of what our supervisory union accomplishes because we've caught resources and coordinate as a unit. Thank you so much for your time.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Tyler LaGrange is on deck.

[Teal Fallon]: Hello. I'm Teal Fallon. I am a parent, moving to the store, and I am the after school club coordinator at the middle school. Thank you for opening the floor to public comment. I'd like to talk a little bit about what happens after school, about what happens after the bell rings when kids leave, how long that bus ride is. Many people have mentioned that. I actually went to Woodstock, which I think you guys have visited, you mentioned, and they had a very robust after school program when

[Nelly Nenzow]: I was there. I stayed in theater.

[Teal Fallon]: There was like every single sport. But those bus rides were really long, and kids who did not have parents who could help them with transportation have limited access to those things. And having programs in a smaller community really gives more access to kids. Here we're able to take advantage

[Hudson Ren]: of the $5 bus as

[Hannah Prince]: well to get kids home,

[Teal Fallon]: and it's easier for parents to pick their kids up from a program that ends at 04:30 if they live close by. So, just would want to know that there was some thought given to what those opportunities are going to be for kids going forward if they had a longer distance from school. I think that I have heard people talk about after school programs a little bit condescendingly, as if it's a secondary thing, but I would have challenged the notion that our duty to our children ends at the end of the school day. So much of what education is and what teachers do and why education is so complex is because a lot of that is allotmenting. And studies show that the more consistent, trustworthy caregivers that a human being has in their youth, the more well adjusted and successful an adult they will be. And that is what teachers are doing all day, and that is what we can do by providing these safe environments for kids to pursue their interests, to get exercise, to solve problems, to experience opportunities to step up and be a leader that they might not otherwise take. I actually maybe have time for the story. I had one kid in my program who felt passed over for leading a game, and the advisor gently suggested that we needed to see some more leadership from that student. The student was upset and didn't seem to understand what that meant to us. I asked the student what they thought leadership meant, and they pointed to a definition on

[Speaker 0]: their phone. So I said, okay, let's put

[Teal Fallon]: it that way. Humor me, do a lot of experiments, and turn towards your classmates with curiosity. What are they doing? What are they thinking? How are they experiencing this game that means so much to you? It was the end, just so you're not, which

[Hudson Ren]: is very creative and fostered storytelling, as well as collaboration, cooperation, leadership. So by the

[Teal Fallon]: end of that day, this kid agreed and did what I had asked, and two weeks later was DM ing their own game. This is a child who is often quiet, reserved, does not interact with their peers. I know this child. I've known this child for years, and they only experience tragedy. It's a lot for them to deal with in their life. And this was, and they have behavioral problems during the soul day. This was an opportunity for them to experience a different way of being and moving through the world that I don't think that they could have had if they had to instead get on

[Hudson Ren]: a bus, go home to a

[Teal Fallon]: dark house, get off that bus at 05:00 and wait for their parents to get home. So thank you very much.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank And by the way, this committee is very.

[Phoebe Styles]: Yes, very.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Dana Grossman is on there.

[Tyler LaGrange]: Hello, my name is Tyler LaGrange and I live in Rutland. My family has been here in rural Vermont for just five years now. One kid graduated a year or so ago and the other is currently a junior. In most ways, these decisions won't have much impact on me. It will be easy to just let everyone else make these decisions for me.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: But I feel compelled to

[Tyler LaGrange]: speak out from what I've seen working since we've been here. My oldest is now in college, pursuing their artistic passions. My youngest is here, is more interested in learning than they've ever been, and participates in band, you saw them here, bowling and drama and more. I don't know how much the day to day general education would change if further consolidation happened. But I do know that if I had to drive two or three or four towns away to get them to all their practices and matches and whatever activities, that would be significantly harder to deal with. And they'd also be less inclined to participate in as many things, because it's just a lot of overhead for them too. There's just nothing that can alleviate enough of that, and it's 100% going to mean less opportunities for our kids and more stress associated costs for parents. That's point one. My second point, I just wanna say that I've written to Superintendent Kunarni once or twice a year, often with something that I'm a bit agitated about. He's written me back every single time, and I felt heard every single time. That says a lot about him in general, the right person for the right job, but there's also just a limit to how much that scales. You guys know that too, because I've actually written letters to my congressmen and you guys, and I haven't gotten response back every time. So it just doesn't scale. But one other thing I just wanted to point out that stands out is there was a police involved gun related incident event that happened overnight a year or two ago that just filled parents with anxiety. I brought my kid to school that morning. I'm a little hesitant, And Kunarni was standing out in front of the school, and I was able to shake his hand and chat with him for a few minutes, and I just That small gesture of him being here when that was going on made a world of difference that day. So even our Superintendent Kernan is in charge of two or three times as many schools and towns, as great as he's been, there's just a limit to the availability and his ability to be there for schools, parents, teachers, faculty, and school boards, and so on. I get that you're in a tough position between the governor having grand plans and Vermonter Athenic Financial Relief, and I get that you put significant effort into the bill at hand. But I have far more belief that Kearny and this supervisory union can provide informed guidance towards viable fixes. The details I've gleaned from the bill currently as it stands, way has more Phil Scott than Superintendent Kernan, that's not a plan I can get behind, and I just don't think it's good for our towns or many of the other small towns across Vermont. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Justin Ray is on deck.

[Dana Grossman]: I'm Dana Grossman and my husband Dan and I have lived in Sector for fifty three years and both of us have held positions with the Thetford Town School District and Thetford Academy board roles and various other roles both our daughters went all the way through Thetford Schools graduated from Thetford Academy in '94 '99 we are still involved in the schools because they do more than educate our students as many of the previous speakers have said they are the fabric of our communities. I would like to commend the White River Valley School District for holding this meeting today. I would like to commend the Senate Education Committee for your willingness to get out of the State House and around the state and hold these listening sessions and I would very much like to commend the task force for its hard, thoughtful, data driven work and for all the reasons that the previous speakers have said, I wholeheartedly also support their recommendation.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Margaret McQueen is on that.

[Dustin Ray]: Hi there. My name is Dustin Ray and I live in Stratford, Vermont. And actually because of my accident they suggested I live in South Bedford. But yeah, I just I'm also a school board member for Stratford and I just, you know, in our supervisor union, I've seen how close relationships and local knowledge directly improve outcomes for students, personally. Administrators know our schools, our families, and our communities. When a problem arises, it's stressed quickly, often before it becomes a larger issue. A district, as it grows larger, decision making becomes more centralized and less responsive. Policies that may work in urban or suburban settings often don't translate well to rural communities like ours. Distance both geography and relational make it harder for students and families to be seen and heard. I'm concerned that this act could unintentionally weaken what already works well in our small supervisory union. Well, it's

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: not the fault.

[Dustin Ray]: I urge you protect the local governance structures that allow schools to remain responsive, connected and student centered, especially in rural Vermont. I really appreciate. I know you guys have got a gargantuan task ahead of you and I really appreciate you coming out and listening to us. And I will say like I've heard other members that came up here at this microphone, know, just want to reiterate everything they've been saying. I mean it's this could change the fabric our state you know not just in the education realm. But so yeah I appreciate your time and thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: David Spoles is on deck.

[Speaker 0]: Margaret McLean from Beacham Board. I am a steering committee member of the Rural School Community Alliance. The Alliance represents 104 towns like the towns in White River Valley Supervisory Union. These towns have all voted to join the Alliance either by a vote of their school board or a vote of their select board. The alliance has been listening to these towns since January. We also attended the task force meetings and read the input of the over 5,000 Vermonters who participated in the task force. The message is clear if you're listening. Vermonters are not afraid of change. Vermonters recognize the issues of quality and cost need to be addressed. Vermonters are willing to step up and help solve those issues by working in partnership with the state. Vermonters do not expect to be told what to do and forced into merger. The Montes wish to step up and partner with the state. We need the state to be willing to partner back. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Betsy Donahue was on deck there.

[David Scholes]: Good afternoon. I'm David Scholes from Battle Grove and, you all have been

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: very familiar with me. I spent many hours watching Wittyberg and I've

[David Scholes]: seen and heard a lot of the things that you've heard. So I'm really grateful that you're here now and hearing from parents and teachers. It's and hearing from the hearing these beautiful children who gave me goosebumps when I came in the door. Typically you don't hear these voices in the system in Vermont. I was a school board member of Brownsville for fourteen years. The last four were at first school board. I was chair for the two years, the two COVID years. And during that time, since we emerged, we were a force merged. And during that time our student numbers have declined, student performance has declined, students emotional connection with the schools has declined. All this is verifiable. Our budget document now is so thick that it's just the information is unavailable to the city. No one can understand what's going on. I have to rely on public assets to find out what the people spending is in the schools in my district. So you have demonstrated how to work in a bipartisan manner this year and I'm really grateful to see you do and happy to see that. And I hope you can do that again this, this coming session. So I have a question more than a statement. And that's, will you take up the, the Cooperative Education Services model when you start the session in January, I asked a question to Senator Hashim last night at one of our school board meetings. And he wants to, but he said it's up to the vice chair and the chair, what you take up. I would ask you, will you take that up immediately? That's the first recommendation from the task force. And it's the only one that I've heard in forty years, more

[Tyler LaGrange]: than forty years, of being involved in education in Vermont.

[David Scholes]: It's the only idea I've ever heard that actually makes any sense

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: as far as saving money and creating a possibility of greater performance. Thank you. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Before you start, Kurt is on deck. Now you're on.

[Betsy Donahue]: So Betsy Donahue, I am a parent here in South Royalton. I myself actually grew up in a rural school in Vermont, not here in South Royalton necessarily, but a few towns up in Northfield. And I I remember going through my high school experience wondering if there was something else out there for me. Being a member of a rural community, being a member of a small school, I could see that there were opportunities that I did not have. Could see that there were things that students in larger schools were getting that I wasn't. But I will say this, what I had in a small school was people who were invested in me. I had people who were invested in seeing that I succeed and that I developed the skills that I needed to succeed. I went on to win multiple state championships in sports and to attend college, getting a master's degree from MIT in mechanical engineering, coming from a small school in the state of Vermont. So So my husband and I, we both we both have advanced degrees. We moved away for a number of years. And when we decided to come back, because we knew that was part of our plan, we knew we wanted a rural school. We knew we wanted a place where our kids would be supported, where they would have people who were invested in their success, and we have found that here. I still think about what else is out there for my kids. What opportunities might they have somewhere else that they don't have here? And I always come back to the families that we are here with in this community. And I don't wanna lose that. The value of that sense of community of those families is absolutely critical to the success of our kids and the success of our towns. So, you know, I heard you say at the beginning of the session here, what this bill is all about, this act is all about, is excellent opportunity for every student. I don't think bigger schools are the solution to that. The solution to that is investing in our kids and meeting them where they are at to provide the opportunities they need to succeed. And that's what I wanna leave you with today. Thanks.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And Asia, can't forget the middle name, but connect this on the so I'm back.

[Curt Albee]: Good afternoon. My name is Curt Albee. I live in South Straubord, a differentiated construct. I've lived there for fifty six years. I could have ended up there by accident in 1969. My wife and I decided to stay because we found out fairly early on that the elementary school there and the people who worked there were really special and we decided to stay and raise our children there. And I think it was the best decision that we've made. My kids both graduated from the school Incredibly well prepared for high school. They both went to Hanover High School. They both attended the University of Vermont and have successful careers. I have two grandchildren at the University of Vermont now and two children in the schools at the Lynn Burlington. I went to a small high school in Arlington. My family moved to Vermont in 1960. That was probably the best move that my family ever made. I loved my high school. I think there were a total of 140 students in the seven through 12 at that point in 1960. But school, and when I graduated from college I taught high school social studies for three years in Vermont. And my experience, that experience and my experience in high school and my experience with my children in school, education is about teaching and learning. Teaching kids to learn and at the same time and I found this early on as a teacher learning from your students, learning how to teach. Bigger is not better. Fools are about teachers. We need to recruit the best teachers. We need to pay them. And that necessarily has not everything to do with the size of the school obviously in experience. When I stopped my teaching career in 1971. I worked in construction for the rest of my work in Lottie and I'm holding here an editorial from the Valley News on the December 6 that says to state the obvious thing something is not a plan. That was Governor Scott's description of we have to do something and I can tell you I've been working in construction for forty seven years no plan is a plan for disaster. Would, with all due respect to the Secretary of Education who's also said in an adjoining article we did our homework while I put my teacher hat on again and say I might give her an incomplete.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Jamie Daniel is on deck.

[Asha Labesha Pennant]: Hi. My name is Asha Labesha Pennant. First generation American. I moved to Rochester, Vermont twenty six years ago from the Boston area, graduated from Rochester High School and went to Middlebury College, but then left with no intention of coming back. And somehow, I returned, and even stranger married a dairy farmer. And now we raise our family in Rochester, Vermont. Our oldest daughter is 13. She's at Middlebury Union Middle School. We are lucky enough to take advantage of school choice, and for her, it's perfect because she will be able to take advantage of the agricultural programs that they offer. And her plan is to go to Cornell and then come back and run our dairy farm. The number of dairy farmers in Vermont is dwindling, so we really encourage her do that. Our nine year old really had a hard time during COVID, and so she ended up, we ended up moving her to Stockbridge Elementary School, which for her was perfect. The small community, her quirkiness came back. She really thrived in that setting. My seven year old is at Rochester, where he is able to have his reading at a grade above. He also has medical challenges and has a five zero four. I know that all schools are required to abide by the five zero four, but our school being so small, they've really been able to work with me and meet all his medical challenges as they come. Our five year old is a thriver. He will do anywhere. He's never met a stranger, and he's Yeah, so if you keep track, because sometimes I lose town, there's four, four kids, and out of them, only one would kind of do well anywhere. So I'm a small dairy farmer. We've been told constantly that we have to milk more than 100 cows. We're not going to survive. We're not feasible. And yet, somehow, we found a way. We're creative. We come up with ways to survive. We diversify. We find a way. This morning, I was feeding calves, and I had a calf that, you know, checked all the boxes, right? She should have been doing fine, but I just felt like something was off. And I said to my husband, I said, Listen, something's off with her. Her name is Starstruck. Something's off with Starstruck. Okay? She's not right. And sure enough, twenty minutes later, I see him tearing across the yard. Even though she checked all the boxes, she was having a medical emergency. She almost died. I saved that calf because I knew her baseline. Right? I was able to meet her needs even though she checked all the boxes. She should have been okay. But I knew her baseline. I'm a small farm, and we're able to survive because we can be creative. We can find other ways. And I feel like if small businesses in Vermont, small farms in Vermont can come up with those ways to be creative, then you, our elected officials, can also be creative and come up with ways to save our small schools and protect our children.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. We're having a hard time with the handwriting on this next one. Somebody from Sharon. Nancy. Nancy, or is that an m? Nancy? And what's that at the end? This one from Sharon. Oh, okay. Okay. Then Kim Horr, I don't think. That was easier. Okay. Hi, your honor.

[Jamie Daniel]: I welcome the opportunity to speak with you all. I'm Jamie Daniel. I've been a member of the, WREB School Board since last March. And I joined the school board. I was encouraged by people in my community partly because of what we had heard might be happening with our schools. Glad to be here. I really agree and welcome all the comments people have made previously about the impact of these potential changes on our children. What I want to address here is something that has also been brought up, which is the argument that somehow this is a financially good idea for our communities. This may seem like a long, I'm making a long story short, but let me give you a little full example of how that seems to be false logic. In ten years ago, my now in law family of a young couple moved here and bought a then dormant farm in Bethel. Where they were at that farm they had their young son who was born. After that the couple's in law, brother-in-law and my son who was married to the brother-in-law moved here because they wanted to be closer to their family and they wanted to be closer to their child. The child's parents moved here from a very busy West Coast community so that they could have their child go to local schools and small schools and contribute to a small community. Shortly after that, I bought a house here and moved here from Chicago when I retired. I was an educator for forty years and moved here. Shortly after that, the couple's parents moved here. Why am I bringing that all up? Because all of us moved here, bought houses and contributed to the community because of that one child having moved here so that he could go, his parents said he could go to a small school and they could pick him up from school every day after school. Among the people that moved here, we now have four families, myself included, paying property tax, which all just went up. All of those people started four businesses among them. All of those businesses are contributing to the community and paying tax in the community. Several of those businesses have contributed to the Bethel revitalization project. One of them is a bar on Main Street in Bethel that I imagine a lot of people here might retire to after we have this hearing. And I know some people who are there pretty much every day. It's part of the social life of the community. I'm bringing that up because all of us believe that we are contributing to a community that cherishes our children, allows our children to be part of cohorts that continue all the way from grade school up through high school, if possible. The young child who everybody moved here to support is now in second grade. He has a cohort of kids he's been with the whole time. Some of them are farm kids. Some of them are kids that are professionals. Some of them are kids that are struggling financially. Others are fairly well off. And he's learned how to get along with everybody and support everybody, which to me is part of the Vermont way. So I really hope folks will think twice about whether this is a financially good solution for Vermont generally and for Bethel and South Road in particular. Thank you. Thank you.

[Name not stated (Chair, Stockbridge Trustees of Public Funds)]: Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share our perspectives. You've heard a number of impassioned pleas from parents and education experts and then offer proof of how rural education can be a model for success for the rest of Vermont. I am the chair of the Stockbridge Trustees of Public Funds. I moved to Vermont in retirement after raising my family in nine states and Canada. I'm here by choice, and

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: I love it here, as do my children.

[Name not stated (Chair, Stockbridge Trustees of Public Funds)]: I'm not here to repeat what you've already heard, but to offer a different perspective about why our community school is critically important to our rural community and the fabric of our community. As you've heard, Stockbridge is a small and engaged rural community.

[Chris Jarvis]: One of

[Name not stated (Chair, Stockbridge Trustees of Public Funds)]: the charges of the trustees with public funds is to help residents in need with funds that are pledged to the town by former residents. In our role, the trustees work closely with the principal of the central school in Stockbridge to support families in need. Losing that close community tie will put families in need further at risk of falling between the cracks. Stockbridge supports education at all levels. The trustees, support high school graduates with a congratulatory check when they graduate. We also have a tuition reimbursement program for secondary education. And we we believe, as the town does, that education is important because it contributes back to Vermont. We need to have a strong, work, a strong competitive workforce for the future, and the local community supports that in every way. The central school is the heart of our town, supporting not only education but also health care and social services, as you've heard before. It enables our community to support each other in invaluable and informal ways that a larger school just wouldn't enable. So please strongly consider the voices you've heard today as we move forward with education reform. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Elaine Fernan is on deck.

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: Thank you all for your time this afternoon. I'm Eric Anderson. I moved to Chelsea in 2001 and began teaching at the Chelsea School, Beatty Middle School, the face of time, science that I served down there.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: I quickly fell in love with

[Eric Anderson]: the town with families whose students I taught. A few years later, I met my wife, who was home visiting her family, and fell in love with her. She was my wife then. But still crazy sitting up. She's behind and married us on the hill, out behind our little farmhouse we bought. So let's see. Chelsea is a really special place, as I know a lot of people feel that way about these small towns. And our schools are essential to keeping not only the heart, but the backbone of these small rural communities. They provide so much for their families, and they provide so much for the communities as a whole. During the act 46 time early, Chelsea didn't close our high school. It was incredibly painful. As someone involved in the school, it was a hard hat to wear, multiple hats to wear, is best for our community, what is best for our students. I ultimately became a reluctant supporter of closing our high school because seeing what opportunities our high school students needed, I felt the time was right for that. Any further closing schools or consolidation for younger students though, to me seems very unjust and inappropriate. To put seventh, eighth, sixth graders on buses and send them far away to their hometowns for potential opportunities, potential savings does not seem worth the trade offs. And those trade offs are being close to home, being around people who know them and care about them, and the opportunities that our small towns and smaller schools offer. During Act 46, we visited larger schools. We looked at what they offered. We went to Manchester Middle School. They offered algebra to their middle school students at 7AM and they projected their video to other schools. We currently offer that in our small rural campus. Sugared under a timber freight sugar house at our students. So I don't know what other schools have those opportunities. Just because we don't offer everything, it doesn't mean we're not offering a lot for our students and our families and our communities. So maintaining our rural schools is essential for our students

[Dr. Joshua Boyd]: and the fabric of

[Eric Anderson]: Vermont. Thank you for your time.

[Multiple public commenters (ID reused)]: Hello, my name is Megan Hurns. I live in

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: Sharon. I have been a volunteer for Sharon Elementary School for thirty five years. I was on a school board for most of the 90s, so I've really been involved in the school I see the kids from kindergarten now pre k up to sixth grade and see the wonderful development of these children especially the students who come in with behavioral and mental issues they are supported so well in the small school all the teachers drove all the children they walk in the hallways and it doesn't matter what professional or support staff person is walking down the hall towards them they know them we greet them and the students besides learning arithmetic and spelling they learn how to be good citizens they are all part of the community of the school the town has started a Sharon Health initiative that sponsors a monthly free luncheon and every month a different class classroom students comes to the luncheon and interacts with the senior citizens. Now if these students were far away that would never happen. It's a wonderful opportunity for the townspeople to see the students and for the students to be with for the most part older adults because it's at noon. The younger ones help decorate they talk, sit and talk to people, the older students help serve and prepare the food. Another indication of our community is our town just decided to float a $7,000,000 bond of our small school so that we could bring the pre k students from their falling down mobile homes or mobile classrooms that are way out of useful life and bring them into the school. Now the town would not have done that if we thought our students were going elsewhere. One of the reasons people decided to do it was saying well if we improve our shul we show you that we are we want our shul to succeed we're gonna we're gonna take on a $7,000,000 bond to make that happen I don't think that sending children on transportation for a long period of time can do anything but hurt them As far as Act 73 we have all been waiting for years to see what the alternative to healthcare nationally is and it's never been presented and in this atmosphere why would we accept the governors and the secretaries just a storage that this is going to save us money it just does not work that way we need to either see some proof some real numbers of how it's going to help or us to say, well, me, but as far as community, it's very important. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Francis Slater is on deck.

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: My name is Gene Krausz. I live in Bethel, and I am somewhat active in my community. Small town, a small elementary school that's part of the West, the White River Valley Supervisory Union that I think is just the right size. I think there is much to commend it as a model for what might work elsewhere in the state because I want everybody in the state to have everything that our kids have. One of the things that I enjoy as a community involved person is that I know these two women over here on a first name basis.

[Gene Krausz]: I know Jeanne Canarney on a first name basis. And when I have a concern from my community or about my school, they are accessible. All of them. And do know what that is. You have constituents with whom you are involved on a first name basis. Sometimes they are a pain in the neck. I know that, but to be able to eyeball people, see their face when you raise a concern is critical. And so I want to put a word in for this not being too big to be able to relate to one another, to be able to maintain local control, local involvement in the school. A long time ago I heard a word, personality, just defined not as kind of singiness, but as the least amount that will really do. And that's how I look at taxes when I was on the medical side. The least amount of taxes, but it's got to be enough that'll do the job. The least amount of busing, but enough that it will get the job done and the job includes a good education. So, I want to leave that with you. And I also want to ask what happens to the schools we abandoned? Sometimes for a buck they get turned over to the town. And now that building becomes an albatross on the town. And now we've got towns thinking about how do they put a couple million dollars in the renovation of a building so that it can be useful. Those are side costs. Two costs that need to be addressed at the legislature that are not education. Medical costs, we can't just accept the medical system we have now and expect that things are going to get better. You as senators have a responsibility to see that we do something about reducing medical costs for all of our citizens. And second, we fund our taxes with our schools with property tax. Property taxes are a wealth tax. How much wealth do you have? How much is your property? Rather than a wealth tax, for many of us in Vermont, we are not property wealthy, but we may have better incomes. And an income tax is far more just, far less impactful on those at the bottom. I ask you to think about medical costs, and I ask you to think about our tax system writ large.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And Elizabeth Burrows is on there. Elizabeth here? Okay. Yes.

[Sandy Slater]: Hi, my name is Sandy Slater, and I am a resident parent of two children here at

[Asha Labesha Pennant]: Rose Elementary School, and I also work as a

[Sandy Slater]: farmer school coordinator in Bethel and Rose Elementary Schools. And I had the pleasure of speaking with Sandra Weeks over lunch today. In the cafeteria year, we

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: were surveying local beef that was sourced by Wilma's Butchery,

[Sandy Slater]: a local business. It was the meat sauce, and so they had anything we noticed. The children were around. She made me get monthly. And I just want to share the perspective that what happens in our school affects our wider community. And so, as you think about changes to school structures, how

[Phoebe Styles]: is that reporting out

[Sandy Slater]: to our communities? Elizabeth Bromma was a small business owner. She worked really hard for several years to be able to be a vendor to our school district, to our best zoom, serving the 10 pounds in the area. And once she was able to get off with her reading in place and the equipment in place and staff in place to be the vendor that provides all of the ground beef that our students eat here. This means that she handled the business of the variety of things, which she's supporting 23 additional small businesses, farmers in our districts who are sending their children to school, paying taxes here, doing the work that communities do to support our unusual bribing. And so I just wanted to share that perspective that, of course, what happens in schools is really important, but what happens in the schools affects the community in so many ways. Just one small, very small example of how our age related community is really depend upon each other to thrive and survive. And not to mention just the benefits for our students to know that the food that they're eating is from their own family farm or is from their parents' business or comes from the neighborhood that they grow up in, and what that means to be known, to be seen, feel like you matter as a real person, not just an anonymous member in a huge pool. And as a parent, do want to share, and also as a staff member, to echo some previous statements that Superintendent Yukonami is incredibly present, available as a staff member, I get a response from them immediately, and I think that that support is really critical in this. Those things don't scale in the same way that Elizabeth Roma couldn't scale. She couldn't serve 4,000 servings of meat sauce in her small local shop. And in order for us to scale to that level for our schools to be that size, we would really lose that local connection. And what does that mean for our state? What does that mean for our state of agriculture, as farmers, and land based businesses? I think there are really big questions that the community should be looking at beyond the economics of our school budgets. So really thinking about how does this impact our economics

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: of the state in a large scale. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Rebecca Stone is on deck. Hi. Good to you. How are you?

[Elizabeth Burrows]: I am Elizabeth Burrows, I am the primary only of Karen. I'm also a school board member of Windsor Southview Supervisory Union. I'm a resident of Brownsville, and I am a representative of the Windham District, and I want to thank you for taking the time today to hear this public, and I also really want to thank all of the people who came because this is tremendous amount of support for public education. I don't really have anything structured to say, but I do want to say a couple of things. One is that I'd like to start with the fact that school boards actually predated select boards. It's true. It's true. They were the first entryway in early American rural communities. They were the first entryway into civic engagement because rural schools were such a high priority for parents. It was a way for parents to be able to connect with each other and problem solve as community members, and that grew into further civic engagement and democracy in our states, in their early formation, including Vermont. So I think it's really important to remember that because that actual way does apply today. Is rural communities are all we've got. They're what we have. It's what actually makes Vermont great, and I've heard from a number of constituents who feel as though the small schools and in rural communities that we all love and support and have been talking about all afternoon are backbones of communities, and that as such, they, the schools and the communities, and therefore the constituents and voters and taxpayers, are being taken for granted and overlooked. Would also like to add that wanna,

[Speaker 0]: since I don't have much

[Elizabeth Burrows]: time, I wanna give you a few things that I have heard from my constituents about Act 73. I've kept them informed every single step of the way because I am a school board member. They've known about H4504 and its various iterations. I've attended every single meeting of all of the implementation task forces and commissions and advisory councils and whatnot. So, feel my constituents are pretty well informed. So, they ask questions that are informed questions, and here are some that I cannot answer for them. Why is there no data showing fiscal benefits? Why is there no economic analysis on forced consolidation? Why are they asked to take a blind, why they are asked to take a blind label of faith, why income based funding is not being considered, why we don't simply pass the funding formula, and instead of sending for, why leadership appears, Oh. White education is treated like a business rather than the public good that it is, and why public schools are being disarmed while private and independent schools get influenced. This is a technical start up research that's used often by private equity firms in which they cut funding for businesses, and businesses start to falter, move when businesses, and most positive businesses. That is not the way to treat a public good, Becky.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: And, Eliza Luchi is on deck. Go ahead. Hello? Okay. Anyone?

[Rebecca Stone]: Hi. My name is Rebecca Stone.

[Speaker 0]: I'm a resident of Bethel, and I'll speak first as a parent. I have a tenth grader here. I believe you may have sat in on her English class and listened surfacing in the choir and listened to her play clarinet in the band, and now she's providing childcare for this event. I also have a fellow kid, Edna. That's a testament to her, but even more so to our small fools. They may not have every class offering that our big schools have, but they bend over backwards to give our kids the opportunities to be old kids, to pursue these range of interests. If you'd shown up to a soccer game in the fall, would you have seen several of her teammates warm up with a team, rush over to the sidelines to sing the national anthem, then go back and play a game. I am not convinced for a second that that would continue to happen in a larger consolidated school. There are so many opportunities we would lose. Just yesterday, a group of parents, many of whom are here today, our superintendent, our administrators and principals, sat down. They joined us and spent an hour and a half meeting with the group here in this building because we had concerns and ideas and wanted to share them. I don't think for a second that would happen if our district's supervisory unions consolidate. I don't think for a second many of us parents would be able to drive an hour to be in a meeting like that, to bring our kids to soccer every day and pick them up again, to extend their families. In addition to being a parent, I am also a community planner, a small business owner, and a community organizer and committee member in our town.

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: And I want to

[Speaker 0]: speak to that as well. In addition to all the concerns you've heard from people about the impacts on our families, on our kids, on our schools, I want to talk about the impacts to our communities. If the numbers added up and we really did save money under these proposals, which I'm not convinced we would, I don't think we've included all of the other costs to our communities, to our towns, and to many of the other causes that matter here in Vermont. As a planner, I've worked with many state agencies and leaders on our climate action plan, on our creative sector action plan, on community development plans. Our climate action plan calls for less single vehicle car trips, not more. Less driving, more staying close to home. We're working on health care issues all across the state, working to combat addiction, the mental health crises. Some of the best strategies for that are building social connections, helping people meet, connect, be active in their communities, Sending kids further away, hollowing out rural schools, are going to undermine those goals, not improve them. So many of us have chosen to move to these small communities because we value that life, and if we lose our rural schools, we're going to be losing that. As a community planner, I advise planning commissions, conservation commissions, energy committees that one of the very best ways they can get involved and get input and get business done is to go stand on the sidelines of those soccer soccer games.

[Phoebe Styles]: If we lose our schools, we're going

[Speaker 0]: to lose that ability. I hope everyone here in making these decisions takes into account not just the test scores, not just the tax dollars, but all of these externalities, all the many, many benefits our small schools provide, and all the many kidney costs that are not currently factored into the math. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Ma'am, there are no questions. Stacy Peters is on deck.

[Speaker 0]: Good afternoon. I'm Eliza Minucci coming to you straight from Forest School at the First Ranch Elementary School. I'm a resident of Tunbridge. My husband and I have two boys, third and fifth graders in our first branch and five district schools. I'm an elementary school teacher in the first branch district. I work for Indiana University where I'm a senior adjunct professor of education and I've

[Asha Labesha Pennant]: been teaching graduate students there for ten years.

[Speaker 0]: My husband and I have had choices about where to raise our kids, and what we have back in Tunbridge is a real village, a tight knit, can do community where it is a proud tradition to do for yourself and your neighbor. We can get milk right out of a tank within a couple miles of our house. Thanks, Gary. We can barter our maple syrup for beef. Thanks, Ian. We have an ice skunk at our school that volunteers put up with a few drills, sledgehammer, and elbow grease. Thanks, Steph. In Tunbridge, we have a volunteer run food shelf, a volunteer program for helping folks to chores and rides to appointments. We have a terrific public library programming. We have collaborative and active town committees. This place works. And you know what they say about Sunridge? Somebody's gonna fill us in. It's not perfect, but pretty darn close. I want my kids to be immersed in this community where we all play many roles and made things happen for each other. I want them to go watch their neighbors play high school ball and sing in the musical and begin to imagine the choices headed their way. I want them to be nearby in high school themselves, still connected to the whole village of their youth, still helping build the ice cream on a bowl Sunday in December. At our small community and in our elementary school, about 115 kids, this is happening right now. Our community and our school are working. We are taking care of our kids. We are teaching them to feed, and we are teaching them

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: to be good hungry shelters. Don't break this.

[Speaker 0]: If you distance us from control and connection with our schools by layers of administration, by regionalized school boards, or, or forbid, land, by distance to get to our kids' schools, you will decrease the trust, communication, and goodwill that we show each

[Charlotte Tascio]: other in town and in our

[Speaker 0]: dealings with school. Yes, plenty of places have bigger schools. They have more regionalized school boards. Let them. Here, we are raising civically minded, responsible, firm archers. Of course, we spend, we vote to spend money on our kids, so of course it is expensive. Is there anyone who has raised a child who would claim to have a blessing without spending right up to the edge of what they could? That's just human. When we set up government structures to avoid being human, what do we think we will achieve? It isn't wanting to keep our kids in small schools close to home. It isn't that that's pushing us over the edge. What is pushing us over the edge financially is

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: a broken health insurance system and

[Speaker 0]: a broken tax system. I am working to fix what is broken. Don't break what is working so well. Don't break our rural communities and our small and strong schools where kids, some of whom face some really tough starts, are getting a tight wraparound community that really knows and owns them. Don't bring that. Fix what is actually growing by taxing me more. Just by chance, my family tracks more out of the economy than shows up in our little house and our rugged acres. It's not fair that we have a lower tax burden than the garden stone alone. From my perspective as an educator and a parent, do not consolidate our elementary schools, do not set a minimum size for elementary schools. Do not consolidate our school boards. Our small rural elementary schools are not broken. Go find what is actually broken. It's probably not in your community. Make them fix it. Tax us more fairly, and let us all live like a good religion does, helping out our neighbors because we need.

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: Hi,

[Speaker 0]: I'm Stacey Peters, I live in Hancock. I'm the chair of the Grandville Hancock Unified District. We are way over in Addison County, but part of the White River Valley SU. I am here, as some of you may know, Grandville and Hancock don't operate schools. We closed ours, made the difficult decision to do so several years ago when I had just moved into town. And I will tell you that a lot of this conversation has been precipitated on the idea that population has been in decline and have to respond to that. Our accounts show you that closing schools does not help with population decline. Our closing schools exacerbate it. When I moved into Hancock, we had a bull mill in Grandville. We had a hardware store in Hancock. We had a plywood mill. We're a general store in Grandville because we sustain that school. Our towns have more or less become employment deficits. The only way these towns survive is twofold. One, as part of the White River Valley SU, we have some local agency. If I'm if I'm hearing from parents as a school board chair about transportation issues, and there are a lot of transportation issues, please invite me to come testify on some of the transportation issues with sending people to mountains on buses in the wintertime. It's a disaster. But people can talk to me and I can go to the superintendent and we can discuss it with the student schools and figure out solutions. We can figure out solutions to give kids opportunities where they don't. We give them what we can, but it's tough and it's a struggle and it only works because our small communities have people advocating to them who know them and who are their neighbors. We wouldn't have that under the governor's proposal. We would lose that by getting rid of the superlocating instruction, as I'm sure some of you

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: have heard from

[Speaker 0]: others. Secondly, the only reason we survive is without a school, if you can't educate kids close to home, you need to be educating them in the same direction that parents are traveling for work. We live in an age of pandemics, of security measures that are too horrific as a parent to think about, and of just random illnesses and headaches,

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: and you need to be able to kind of

[Speaker 0]: get hit under school without driving an hour and a half in the opposite direction of traveling for work. This town would then not be the employment desert, they are available to all deserts, families cannot sustain that. Since I have a couple of seconds left, everyone else here has already cited lots of good research that I'm sure you've already heard. So I will leave you with some wisdom, regretfully on Reddit. I was doomscrolling the other night reading a big long thread about Acts 73 its consequences, and someone made a great analogy that I would be remiss not to share. And that is the plan as it stands with the governor feels like going outside one morning, finding your car doesn't start, and deciding to change over your tires. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: John Deckers, Chelsea Greta.

[Chris Jarvis]: You're on. Hello, I'm Chris Jarvis. I, let's see, I've been a Vermonter for forty six years. So I've grown up in the state. I've been schooled K through 12, and I went to Castleton State, graduated in, you know, in a home and have put three kids through school. You know, I've also been on the select board and council for ten years. I was the chair of the select board for eight years. I was on the school board for two years. I've had some pretty good opportunities in our area to kind of examine and experience the school system. My opinion is through that time is that there is no one size fits approach to that. And I think we all can admit that, there are small schools that definitely could merge with smaller schools. We do have a geographic challenge in Vermont with Mount Rangers. And there are large schools that often are not managed well. And I think, you know, from my time on the board, is it really comes down to a local responsibility level when it comes to putting together the school systems. And, you know, my time on the school board, you know, in around the COVID here is, you know, the federal government was inducing our area with lots of revenue. And what did people do with that revenue? A majority of people went took that revenue and started creating new positions, new pieces to their school, and putting them on a track that it was not long term sustainable. Our local government decided to use that money for one term, one time type fix. You know, what are things? Could we upgrade the boiler system in our school? We So smartly used our money rather than starting to just put a lot of pieces together that weren't gonna be sustainable. I will say, we are a product here of a school merger. And, know, Bethel and South Burlington, you know, we merged our schools seven, eight years ago or so now. And I would say at the time, you know, we did not see the benefits of the projections that we thought we were supposed to get in

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: the first five years. But the past two years, where

[Chris Jarvis]: there has been, you know, 14%, 17% increases out there, our school district has actually had savings. So again, I think, you know, there are spots where consolidation makes a lot of sense. And I'll tell you that there's a lot of spots where there's big schools like Burlington that are really having a negative draw on the education. So you can't all say we're gonna be big like Burlington when a lot of the issues are Burlington. However, we can all say we need a school if we have 50 kids. So there's definitely gotta be a middle road approach on this. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: That was the last witness who has signed up but we have oh there's more. Okay. Oh there's

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: not a good one. We got more here too. Just

[Speaker 0]: two.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So we'll start with Paula.

[Multiple public commenters (ID reused)]: The phonetic spelling is the box. It's like her.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Oh, I'm sorry. Thought it was Paula. And then followed by, Britton Brick. Do you have one on there?

[Speaker 0]: Hello. I'm Chelsea Gray. I was cute.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah.

[Speaker 0]: I'm Chelsea Gray. I am a resident of Sharon. I am a lifelong Vermantra. I was born in Hartland. I attended Hartland Elementary School as a young person, k eight school in a neighboring district. I currently live in Sharon, my two children attend Sharon Elementary, and I'm an educator in the neighboring district. So I come with a unique perspective of being an educator who works in a rural school, who's attended a rural school in Vermont, and I have taught in several different schools of different sizes throughout Vermont in my teaching career, which spans twenty years. So I've taught in Burlington, taught in Winooski, and I've taught in Hartford, And my children currently attend Sharon. And I chose Sharon to raise my family there because of the school community and because of the school choice available to us as residents. The reason that I've stayed rural is because of many of the reasons that other folks here have mentioned, the strong sense of community and local control, where I feel I can reach out to any member of my school board, the superintendent, the principal, teachers, anyone with whom I may face issue and know the people and trusted people who are involved in my school and my children's education.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you. We've got it. We've got it.

[Speaker 0]: And she gets off on the interstate, and she has to take naps at school. So and then

[Carrie Kellad Delalla]: and then sports.

[Speaker 0]: So this year,

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Chris Friend was the next person. What's food?

[Dustin Ray]: Oh,

[Speaker 0]: it's the name.

[Chris Ransky]: Hello, my name is Chris Ransky. I'm a resident of Montpellier, but I'm a seventh and eighth grade science teacher at Chelsea Palm School. I'm here today representing the White River Valley Educators Association, representing Sharon, Stratford, South Royalton, Bethel, Rochester,

[Sen. Steven Heffernan (Member)]: Stockbridge.

[Chris Ransky]: Anyway, while we're all educators working with children of our towns, we're also community members, parents and tax holders. We know firsthand that property taxes are challenging and we agree that a double digit increase to our property taxes is not good for Vermont or the middle class families who bear the brunt of these increases. We also know that Governor Scott's education reform demands will not address what he claims is an affordability crisis. In fact, his push for state mandated consolidation often increases monetary demands on communities. We appreciate the work done by the Add seventy three School Redistricting Task Force and agree with their executive summary that there could be volunteer mergers and also cooperative regional education services. These recommendations allow for continued local decision making control to determine if consolidation and or sharing resources makes sense for students and communities. We spend our working lives thinking about what's best for students. We teach them, care for them, and listen to them. We urge the Senate Education community to priority students just

[Sen. David Weeks (Vice Chair)]: as we do everything. Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: We have a few more minutes if there's anybody else who'd like to

[Tyler LaGrange]: Michael. My name is Michael Livingston.

[Michael Livingston]: I'm a school board member, Andy Sharon, a lifelong educator. And thank you to all of you for showing up today.

[Dr. Joshua Boyd]: What an incredible turnout. It's so important.

[Michael Livingston]: Thank you very much. My comment is brief, but I think it's important to recognize an underlining managerial decision that was made by Superintendent Kunarni a number of years ago that really speaks to a lot of what you're hearing today. And that is that he has utilized and implemented a really highly functional distributed leadership model here at this school, in this system, that involves staff, faculty, administrators, and really allows people to be taking full responsibility and have a full strong voice in the work that they're doing. So a lot of what you're hearing here today as a result of the work amongst faculty and staff and administrators who are fully committed and invested in and have an authentic voice to decision making at all levels in our program. And as you think about activities that we can implement statewide that make a difference in terms of being responsible and reflective to our communities is something to consider as well. So I applaud him and I applaud also all the work of our faculty, staff

[Dr. Joshua Boyd]: and administrators wanna thank them for their incredibly hard work. Thank you very much.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: So I think that wraps it up. Oh, one more.

[Charlotte Tascio]: I'm a very reluctant public speaker.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Name and town?

[Charlotte Tascio]: My name is Charlotte Tascio and I live in Stratford, Vermont. But I have worked within the school systems here. I've been a nurse for well over forty years and I've been a school nurse for I think I was maybe twenty four of those years. Retired two years ago from the First Branch School. I was a school nurse in Chelsea for many years with all the changes and losing the high school. My two children were educated at the Newton School, and then they went on to school choice. They went on to the Shinn Academy. I believe they got a really excellent education, throughout all their schooling.

[Speaker 0]: What I what I want to

[Charlotte Tascio]: add to today as the school nurse is within the school as a school nurse, we treat and help manage all children. But a lot of our responsibilities fall towards the children of need and the families of need. And we, a lot of my job was focused towards them between the meals and food that we provide for those families, trying to provide them resources. I believe strongly that by consolidating districts further, we harm those children and those families further. And I just wanted to really stress that point. I saw, you know, we saw harm to families when we merged Chelsea and Tunbridge and it took a long time to improve that system. And I believe that the first branch has done an excellent job with that. But making the drives longer, the families that need are not going to be able to provide for their children as well as making it harder for other families.

[Speaker 0]: Thank you.

[Sen. Seth Bongartz (Chair)]: Thank you so much Lieutenant Terry and all the staff here at the school, oh there you are, and the students for really making us feel welcome. I think we felt that at every school we've gone to and we definitely felt that. And thank you for all you do. I think we all feel that strongly we all feel that deeply, and thanks to everybody here for coming out it really matters a lot for us to hear from you, in a way that we don't always get a chance to. So these five hearings, which I guess is the last one, have I think, I know has made deep impressions, each school and collectively a deep impression on the committee, about where belongings are, the things that are important, their the depth of their of caring for students and the depth of caring about their communities and making the connections. So I think we have this will help inform the deep thinking that this committee and the entire legislature has to do over the next several months. So, we can't thank everybody here that we've interacted with today enough. Was, by the way, it's been fun having lunch with all the kids each time we've done it. That was fun today. We had spaghetti with the kids, it was fun. So thank you all. And I think with that, we

[Sen. Terry Williams (Clerk)]: are adjourned.