SmartTranscript of Senate Education - 2025-12-08 - 2:45PM

[Marie Dimanadetto]: Five. [Seth Bongartz]: Okay. This is the senate education committee, December, eighth at CBU High School. And just to set this up a little bit for people who are gonna testify, We tried getting out of the state house last year during the session, and we tried to go to the Montpelier High School. We couldn't even get there because it's so hectic. Once this once you're in the state house, it's very hard to get out and build it on the road. So we're taking advantage of the time before the session to try to visit a handful of districts around the state. We were trying to visit districts that are different, have different makeups. And we started let me back up from one step before I do that. It said that what we're also we're trying to step back a little bit from the immediacy of the bill that's being discussed and just step back a little bit and look at the ways, the opportunities, and challenges in the way that school districts around the state are working to provide, I think, the goal of excellent educational opportunity for every Vermont child. And so we we actually started in Canaan, and one of the smallest high schools in in the state. Although, we're we're not thinking about high schools only, we're thinking about districts. But trying to go to school in Canaan, if there's a school in Vermont that is small by necessity, given the realities of of geography there, it's probably Canaan. And so we started there, and we have also visited Woodstock, one of them, smallish high school, but a little bit bigger than Canaan, and then Rotman, a larger high school. And we've done each of them we've chosen each of them for a little bit of different reasons, you know, small by necessity in Canaan, Woodstock to really focus zero in a little bit on the relationship between facilities because they've had problems issues with their facilities, the facilities and the ability to deliver education. Rutland, because a few superintendents, as I was talking to superintendents setting these meetings up, suggested we go to Rutland because of the way that they provide continuums of service as they're trying to meet that goal of excellent educational opportunity for every one child. And CVU actually is sort of a in a way, is a bookend to Canaan, one of the larger schools in the state, where both different opportunities and challenges, almost by definition being one size versus another. So we're just trying to explore all of this and get a sense of the things that, challenges the opportunities and what schools are doing to meet the needs of every kid, every child across the social economics and ability to the whole the whole system, all the differences in kids. And our last visit in Synoptic will be I can't remember the which supervisory unit is, but the Royalton High School Right. Where we're gonna quite moving valley. And what we're gonna focus on that sort of particular focus within that will be around rural Vermont. But so here we are at CBU. We've had I really enjoyed setting up the back and forth setting today up with Adam and Catherine over the over the last couple of months as we've thought this through. And we've had, by the way, a great visit here today, tour of the school, overview, tour of the school, student panel. We've got a student panel at every visit, and that's really, of course, been one of the most rewarding and fun parts about each visit. But I'll I'll say the same thing actually. It's also true about the panels with teachers and staff, the the people who are on the ground in the schools. We've really had some we've worked I think I know it's starting to say important time. We've worked a lot. Mhmm. And so but we end each meeting with the opportunity for the public to comment, and we're trying to, again, we're we're trying to focus on the delivery of excellent educational opportunity for every Vermont child. So to the extent that, you know, that that's what we hope testimony is. That's what the day has been about. Business has been about it. That's what we wanna hear about, as we if we can as you're as you're making your comments or sharing with us whatever you wanna whatever you wanna share with us as parents, former parents, or to be parents [Steven Heffernan]: or whatever. [Seth Bongartz]: That was the community. So but, Adam, you wanted to say a few words in the group? That would be great. [Adam]: I don't know if you need to say any words. I just wanna appreciate you being here, and I wanna appreciate all of you being here. And you'll find our community as a civil one, and this will be a good good discussion. Thanks. [Seth Bongartz]: And I forgot to introduce the bus, of course. I so we'll [Steven Heffernan]: start over here. Senator Heffernan from the Addison County District. We're very close by in Bristol. [Keisha Ram Hinsdale]: Senator Keisha Ram Hinsdale. This will be the school my children attempt. My daughter is at at Hartworks Shelburne right now. My husband is a CVU graduate. And if I can, I just like to say my favorite moment today that was really full circle at the legislator is hearing a young man say that he spoke five African languages when he got here, but he was really struggling to find a sense of belonging? And then, CBU, like many of our high schools now, has gotten an early start on banning cell phones, from campus, from use bell to bell, and he finally started making friends because people were looking out from their phones. So I see representative Angela Arsenault, who is a huge part of that bill. We, you know, we do have the power to do some transformative things in the the policy realm, but not nearly as transformative as what teachers and educators do every day. So we appreciate everything we've learned here and all these other schools. We have great schools [Carl Fowler]: right now. [Seth Bongartz]: Seth Bongertz. I represent the Bennington Senate District, and I'm chair of the senate education committee. And as it turns out, I had both a niece and a nephew who graduated from here about fifteen, sixteen years ago, seventeen years ago in River College. Both had they had both had great experience. So, with that, first on the list, we you know, maybe we can make it three minutes because we have we're not as we when we were in Woodstock, we had to really be really limit testimony. But so why don't we say, three minutes instead of two since we don't have a a huge list? And the first person is Carl Fowler. [Carl Fowler]: I'm sorry. Your Yeah. [Seth Bongartz]: For the record, your name and your town of residence. It's Carl [Carl Fowler]: Fowler from Williston Okay. And I'm a retired. I wanted to express in part my deep disappointment that the the foreign committee that met during the winter to try to discuss alternative routes and why do you kick the ball back to you guys? And I'm deeply upset for that because we know we have to make some tough decisions, but we don't even know what the decisions are. And by the failure to come up with a recommendation other than let's just all talk some more, what in fact that committee did was to delay any constructive real reform for yet another year. I am in complete favor of expenditures of money on education and lots of it. I am not so much in favor of supporting dozens of supervisory unions across the state. We need to find some way to take a look at the administrative overlay, not the teaching overlay, but the administrative overlay in this state and figure some way to be able to get those costs back into control. But irrespective of all of it, I draw your attention just to my family's personal history of tax rate from this community. We moved to to Williston in two thousand twelve with a fifty two five thousand two hundred and seventy seven dollar school tax. Last year, we paid seven thousand hundred and sixty nine. Now that's not a staggering increase but it translates into thirty five point nine percent more. But here's the catching point. We look at twelve point six percent perhaps as the increase this year. Twelve point six percent of a seventy one thousand by comparison is a lot more money than it was when it was five thousand. People living on fixed incomes, retirees, people who don't think they pay for schools because they live in rental housing not realizing, of course, it's buried in the rent may not understand this, but affordability is real in this area. And since I don't wanna cut classes, I don't wanna eliminate music, which is the inevitable first target or eliminate art or my old stalking horse history. I don't wanna eliminate history. I wanna see if there's some way we can systematically address our cost issue without going after curricula. And if there isn't, then we may face even more difficult decisions. But I urge you to come up with another charge to look at administration this year and, for whatever it's worth, to find some way to hold down the pending property tax increase. It is becoming unbearable. Thank you. Thank you. [Seth Bongartz]: Next is David Cuddly? David Connery. [Carl Fowler]: Got it. [Seth Bongartz]: Okay. I got it right. K. [David Connery]: You do so well in Joey Adams' curse of class, I guess. My name is David Connery, and I'm a resident of Shelburne, and I'm also the vice chair of respect to CVST School Board. Recently, leadership from the Vermont Senate has referred to our education system as unreliable, volatile, and one that is yielding diminishing return. The governor has referred to the education system as failing. However, as a parent of two recent graduates of the school, I would never use those words to describe the system. As a school board member, I'm also concerned about the increasing tax burden on our community, which has long supported our schools. Two years ago, my education property tax has increased nearly twenty percent in spite of our schools cutting forty two positions and about five million in budget. We cut another forty positions the following year in just over four million dollars to put forth a responsible budget. It should be no surprise that the increase in tax rate far exceeds the expected increase in spending, which reflects paying our hardworking educators fair wages and rising health insurance costs that are unaffordable to everyone. Yet we knew that the increase in tax rates this year was a foregone conclusion when the legislature chose to buy down tax rates again last year. We've also watched the legislature continue to pass critical education reforms, Act forty six with voluntary redistricting, which we did, Act one twenty seven from which we are still adjusting to the negative impact, and Act one seventy three, which has never been implemented in earnest statewide. Each one of these attempts to reform was either poorly designed, poorly implemented, or poorly monitored. I know that you had the chance today to spend time in our school and talk to our students. I hope this experience showed you the immense value of public education at scale and what an investment in our schools mean for young Vermonters, for our community, and for our state as a whole. I hope you carry these lessons with you in Montpelier this this session. In January, you're going to going to head back into session with no evidence based redistricting maps in front of you, and you're going to feel immense pressure to, quote, do something Since you can't, quote, do nothing, to that end, we want to remind you of the following. CVSD is the only district in Vermont that meets the minimum size requirements in act seventy three for one key reason. We consolidated eight years ago and spent the time since doing the hard work that consolidation requires. This work has positively impacted both our students and our community in many ways. Our district structure and size allows our schools to operate at scale and enables our central office to work efficiently in providing the conditions for all students and all schools to advance toward our shared mission and vision. Some examples include the super the superintendent reports to a single board with one budget, and our schools follow a common curriculum framework and unified set of policies. This coherence improves student outcomes through aligned professional learning, consistent instructional practices, and equitable allocation of resources. [Carl Fowler]: Okay. [David Connery]: Our class is well above the minimums outlined in x seventy three. Each k to eight school currently has at least two classes per grade, which allows students to learn in dynamic environments and have a range of peers over the years. We oversee the entire educational experience from pre k or kindergarten through high school, and we understand how our tax dollars are spent allowing us to reallocate resources when needs arise within our school. As you head back to Montpelier, I want to remind you that the current funding formula in Act seventy three does not adequately adequately allow continue to fund the programming that you saw today, which is provided at scale and with a critical focus on personal conviction. Forced mergers identified and implemented in a timeline that does not allow for thoughtful and careful implementation will not yield a more reliable, less volatile educational system, but will instead create chaos that will lead to poor outcomes for our students. [Steven Heffernan]: We're we're we're way over the we're way [Seth Bongartz]: over the three minutes I've been meaning of. [David Connery]: I'm gonna last sentence. Okay. You cannot accept that, and we hope that you won't. Thanks. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. [Seth Bongartz]: Nick Kennedy? [Nick Kennedy]: Hi. Nick Kennedy. Last year, I spoke to a committee that came here about what it's like to be laid off every year being employed in Burma. I was a teacher in Illinois for ten years before I moved here, and I have been through a system of attrition cuts led by Republican leadership in our state in Illinois. And what this turned into at our school, whenever all we talked about is efficiency and maximizing, student products, using this really business like language for people, what it looks like in practice is a teacher like me, an English teacher, who has thirty students in every section. I think the most students I had in one year, just me, that came through my English classroom was two hundred and four students. You don't give good feedback that way. You don't make personal connections with kids. You don't know who they are. They don't know who you are. They're just another face in a crowd. It's really concerning to me as a citizen also how often our governor speaks about increasing class sizes while also claiming that our schools aren't doing enough for students. Those are really counterintuitive ideas. As someone with almost fifteen years in this field, I just strongly want to encourage that conversation to be around what we give to kids when we have appropriate class sizes for them. And sometimes that means out of three, four kids getting independent learning with the teacher, sometimes it is a larger group. There's many forms that this takes, but just saying it needs to be more an increase, in my experience, does not turn out students who are actually capable engaged citizens of the turns out another face in the crowd. Thank you. Thank you. [Seth Bongartz]: Marie the I can't read it. Verdicto? [Marie Dimanadetto]: That's fine. I know it's me. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for being here today. My name is Marie Dimanadetto. I'm a resident of Richmond. I'm a special educator here at CVU. I didn't prepare anything, but I'm here to just talk about a few things that are really important to me as you're making some really difficult decisions with a lot of information. But one thing that I think really makes this district amazing is our commitment to inclusion for students with disabilities. And it's really scary right now to be in to be a special educator, to be a a general educator that wants to support students, to be a parent of a child with a disability or a young person who is disabled given the federal climate of cutting special education funding and resources. So I'm really just here to urge you to please make that a priority as you're trying to vision the future of Vermont public education and make sure you're highlighting the voices of those children and families. A lot of parents and families with students who have the most intensive needs can't come to things like this because they're there caring for their children. A lot of those families are taking their kids to a lot of doctor and therapy appointments. So, you know, as you're thinking about rural communities and making these really massive school districts, You know, think about parents who have standing appointments. And please and please look to CBU as a model of inclusion. My coworker, Nick, who just spoke talked about the impact of class sizes. And I think some of you had talked about how important it is at school to have a sense of belonging. And that really starts with the people here at CBU and the people who work here who have that opportunity to get to know students. And we know that outcomes are improved when students have trusted adults at school. We know outcomes are improved when there's enough staff and faculty to support the individual needs of students. And and so with all of the reductions in that district, it's really scary or in this district, it's scary to think about what our tipping point is. The last thing I'll say, and I know this has been a big factor in school funding, is just the cost of teacher health care is going to double next year. And I think for the first time ever in my career, I actually might have less money per paycheck on even getting whatever yearly raise we get. So I would like to consider the have you consider the complexity of that problem and focusing on our state health care funding, and please reconsider a single payer health care system for our state. [Seth Bongartz]: Thank you. Okay. Thank you. The neck there's only one more person signed up, but I have a few years more who wanna testify, and that's gonna be David Zuckerman. But I'm gonna pass this around in case anybody wants to sign up while while mister Zuckerman is speaking. [Steven Heffernan]: You're on. Alright. I respect your client's feedback receipt. Good afternoon. David Zuckerman, former lieutenant governor or parent of a student at this great high school and Heimberg Community School down the road as well. I'm gonna address sort of the elephant in the room a little bit as well. We know that a year ago, voters voted a huge change because the taxes were just too high, and they are too high and aren't affordable for most people. They made that clear based on Mhmm. Almost well, both the bills they got in August, but singular messaging from the governor that was not countered by nearly anybody as for the cost of the increases. And I think it's critically important that you go through this coming session that you separate the long and short term realities. If you overhaul the education system as originally forecast through a fact seventy three, that's not gonna change this year's twelve percent grade at all. We know that these changes are really more of a a two to six year evolution of savings. And the the current predicament that you wrote into the law is that any changes or adjustments to taxes are tied to change it to the administration of our school. That is a choice the legislature made. It is not a choice that you have to continue with. You have the opportunity to both address short term tax adjustments, such as the second homes, regardless of whatever form of transformation you choose to move forward with. I wanna give huge accolades to the task force. I recognize that they did not come out with the up to three maps, which is my understanding as a language group, up to three maps with forced consolidation. But in part, that's because they heard from five thousand people around the state, the vast majority of whom said, wait a minute. This wasn't what we bargained for when we voted last fall. We want tax relief. We didn't ask for the education overall, particularly with so little evidence that would actually create saving. I think that's yet to be even shown by the governor of the administration, which pushed this proposal, and the legislature carried through. What the task force did was more than what I heard from the first commentary, and I I respect this opinion, but they presented boards of educational cooperative services. That's the thing. That's good. And that was shown with evidence, both in their own testimony, but also from conservative think tank, like a campaign for Vermont, that shows that if you consolidate certain aspects of education, large scale purchasing, fuel contract, bus contract, special ed services, certain opportunities for teachers to work between small school districts, you could save hundreds of millions of dollars while not removing local control, while not forcing small schools to close because, really, that is the crux of the savings in the governor's plan. He just doesn't wanna admit it. And that's gonna be true in rural areas and small central southern Vermont areas that's gonna remove school choice in some of those non operating towns. You don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. You can do precise restructuring, save money, and help taxpayers. Please leave them. Thank you. [Seth Bongartz]: Paul. Is it Lasher? Yeah. Yeah. [Paul Lasher]: Yeah. My name is Paul Lasher. I'm a teacher here actually, not here, but Heinzberg, elementary school teacher. [David Connery]: I echo a lot what [Paul Lasher]: Dave Zuckerman just said. Besides teaching content, today's teachers must be mentors, tech experts, emotional supporters, life skill coaches, foster critical thinking, digital literacy, empathy, adaptive ability while managing diverse needs, collaborating with families, creating inclusive engaging environments for parents to explore complex rapidly changing world. Making districts larger than Champlain Valley School District will not save us money and will not make our job easier. You're gonna end up adding more and more positions at central office regardless. We had a former superintendent that came from Indiana that was a deputy superintendent with multiple superintendents within that district. So we're talking more money there. I like to go back all the time. My dad worked at IBM growing up here in Vermont. IBM in the eighties and nineties was great, except they kept on growing and growing and growing, and you had a manager for a manager for a manager for a manager. And what happened to IBM? We all know, became not our top employer went away. Right? So we don't need that. It it's it's scary to think that the governor is pushing this idea of bigger is better. Bigger is definitely not gonna be better, and it's not gonna save us money. And I think this district is a great example of what can happen when our towns came together to formulate. We're a large we're the largest one in the state. We don't need to get larger. Sure. You can make some other districts combined without a doubt, and you can maybe save some money in that that sense, but being larger than what we are right now is not gonna save money, and it's not gonna help us in the end. So I I really urge you to think about other savings, like I heard already thinking about second homeowners, and other strategies along that line, and to not destroy our school system. We are making really good progress despite what the governor says. And I would say that the federal government and people have a hard easy times spending a ton of money on ICE employment. We can employ more and more teachers as well. So thank you. [Seth Bongartz]: Anybody else? [Carl Fowler]: Yeah. All to add anything? Yeah. Any follow-up? [Seth Bongartz]: Sure. Just very good. [Carl Fowler]: I'm happy to agree with governor Zunerman that we don't need a tiny number of colossal districts, nor am I advocating for that. I am advocating for a serious consideration of more than one plan and for reducing the number of supervisory unions. It's very carefully stated there. Five, I thought, was way too big. I stand by that. And we are indeed here in Chittenden County something of a model on how to make it work. But by the way, we would not try to replicate that elsewhere, it ruins me. And I, again, have to say and I say this is a lifelong Democrat. I am not a Republican. I did not vote to rep Donald Trump, and I wouldn't have to have a day of hell fraud, but I cannot pay more than I don't have, and I won't strip my family and their way of life in order to support endless increases when I don't think enough attention is being paid to how to structure the system so that it works better for everybody. We hear always about what we want with student outcomes. We rarely hear what we want with the people who pay for that. It isn't us against them. It should be us together. [Keisha Ram Hinsdale]: Trying to entice students [Johnny Bush]: to the [Carl Fowler]: week. Yep. Okay. [Johnny Bush]: Well, I can Okay. Hey. Hey. My name is Johnny Bush. [Seth Bongartz]: And you are [Johnny Bush]: I'm a student here. [Steven Heffernan]: Okay. So we're here. Okay. Which town? What? Which town do you come from? Williston. [Johnny Bush]: Thank you. I'm not sure a lot of the conversation before I got here, but I know that it's been focused a lot on the cuts that are going to the school budget following soon. And there are a lot of students at this school I know that are somewhat needing of special education. I am one of them. ADHD, dyslexia, very common right now in most students at this school. And all I know is that if cuts were going to be made, they should not be made there because they are very needed at the school, and they help a ton. They help kids who just genuinely need help with things that normal people should be able to do in life. There are programs at the school that help kids just learn how to do normal things that they wouldn't be able to do without programs at the school. And if they were cut, that would be super duper bad. [Carl Fowler]: Thank you. Thanks so much. [Seth Bongartz]: Thank you for thank you for speaking out. So with that, we have had a great day here. We have enjoyed every one of our visits will be definitely enjoyed today, and we've learned a lot of every visit, and we definitely learned a lot today. So thank you to everybody, And thanks to the whole school and whole school community for making us feel welcome here and really being able to feel like we're a part of the school community for the day. So thank you. And with that, we are adjourned.

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SmartTranscript of Senate Education - 2025-12-08 - 2:45PM

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