Washington Central Story

This newsletter is reaching you on graduation day for the U-32 Class of 2024! Later this evening our seniors will walk across the stage and out into the world (figuratively speaking) - congratulations to every single graduate and the families and caregivers who have supported them along the way.

June represents celebration and transition in all of our schools. From concerts, field trips and parties to celebrate the end of the year, to our sixth and eighth graders who will be stepping up into U-32 - there is so much to be proud of. Anyone who spends their days working in schools know that it is an immensely busy time, running at what feels like breakneck speed until the last bus pulls out of our driveways. And, it is also a chance to reflect on all we've accomplished this year.

It's hard to believe that this is our last newsletter of the 23-24 school year, and my last message to you as Superintendent of Washington Central. It has been a privilege to serve you and your children for the past two years, and I am so very grateful for the commitment, dedication and talent we have here. WCUUSD students have always been, and will continue to be, in very good hands!

In this newsletter you will see some end of year messages and notices that we hope are helpful coming into the summer break. We hope you all have a restful, fun and safe summer!

- Meagan Roy, Superintendent

1. Humanity & Justice - Celebrating Juneteenth and Pride around Vermont
   
2. Equity Scholar Corner
3. Welcoming New Faces! - U-32 welcomes two members to their leadership team
   
4. Summer Announcements - Summer EBT, Gunsafe VT
5. In case you missed it - A Message from your Board about Configuration

There are so many ways to learn, celebrate and acknowledge Juneteenth in Vermont. Here in Central Vermont, the Montpelier Gospel Choir is hosting a concert series on June 15th and 16th (see below for ticket information). If you'd like to travel a bit further, check out these events!

• The Burlington Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion & Belonging is hosting a Juneteenth festival on June 15th from 11:00am-11:00pm: https://www.btvreib.com/juneteenth
• Winooski will host an event on June 19th at 5:00 pm in Rotary Park
• St. Albans will host an event from 11:00-3:00 on June 19th at Tayler Park
• South Burlington will host a series of events on the 17th, 18th and 19th, culminating with a celebration on Juneteenth at 6:00pm at Veterans Memorial Park

Shelley Vermilya, equity scholar in residence

We explore the notion of pride each month here, acknowledging the heritages and identities of citizens across the district. June brings us the rainbow Pride of LGBTQ++; July brings us Disability Pride. We've been celebrating resistance to hate, the bursting of stereotypes, the flamboyance of wonder in the voices across our community. We are in an era of welcoming people to be who they are, honestly and truly, expressing their ancestral and personal wholeness.

We are also in an era when the people we love may be targets of hate and harm from folks who don’t understand them. We work for and wish that delight in difference will defeat fear of the misunderstood or unknown. We believe in curiosity and the willingness to overcome stereotypes and alarm.

The LGBTQ++ communities have fought for more than decades to be seen as whole and loving people. In Vermont, Civil Unions were codified in 2000. In 2015, gay and lesbian couples won the federal right to marry. It took until 2020 for employment and other discrimination to be declared illegal at the federal level. Pride and determination made that happen.

Disability communities fought “Ugly Laws,” ordinances established in 1867 prohibiting anyone deemed to be “diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way,” to be in public view. It took until 1974 for all the “Ugly Laws” to be repealed. The wonderful documentary, Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution reveals efforts to win federal protection for those with disabilities in programs and activities that receive federal funding. That film is filled with determination, and pride.

In the Washington Central Unified Union District, we are determined to create environments that welcome the complexity and pleasure of everyone’s company, where everyone can be proud of who they are, and make way for others to be proud, and thrive.

There is room for everyone under the rainbow of justice and humanity. We have good work to do. I’ll meet you here next year.

May your summer be filled with fresh produce and lots of flowers!

Your equity scholar in residence,

Shelley Vermilya

P.S. I’ve been honored to work with all of the generous hearted and dedicated colleagues who are moving on to new endeavors. Our work will never be done—so hopefully we will stay in touch!

As we have shared earlier, Jes Wills (U-32 Assistant Principal) will be leaving to take over as principal at Peoples Academy Middle School and Julia Pritchard (current U-32 Special Education Director) will be coming across the athletic fields to join central office as the new WCUUSD DIrector of Student Support Services (replacing Kerra Holden, who will be leaving us to take a principalship at the Lyndon Town School). We wish them all well in their new adventures!

We are pleased to be nominating our own JB Hilferty to the WCUUSD Board as one of our Assistant Principals. JB has served as the Dean of Students for the past two years and has been a strong member of the U-32 community for 20 years. He comes to this position with great recommendations and the full support of our community. He has dedicated himself to help all kids grow and learn and he will be a great addition to the U-32 Administrative Team. JB looks forward to serving the U-32 community and helping us reach our fullest potential.

And, we are excited to announce that Cat Fair, current Calais Elementary School principal, will be moving into the role of Assistant Principal for Special Education at U-32. Cat's many years as a principal and school counselor will serve her well as she joins the leadership team with a focus on overseeing special education at U-32. Her strong instructional leadership skills and focus on multi-layered systems of support stood out as a perfect match for continuing the important work of supporting all learners at U-32.

The Agency of Education is participating in the Gun Safe VT initiative lead by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Vermont, the Vermont Attorney General's office, UVM Medical Center, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Vermont State Police, and others.

Safe firearm storage is one of many preventative actions that can keep our school community safe. Safe firearm storage can help prevent firearms from getting into the hands of children and teens, who may use them to, intentionally or unintentionally, harm themselves or others. If you have firearms in your home or if your child spends time in a space where firearms are present, there are important steps that can be taken to keep firearms safe and secure.

Vermont is among the first states to launch the new permanent Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer (SEBT) program to help feed eligible school aged children during the summer vacation months.

The benefit is $120 for the summer per eligible child. Families can use the benefits to purchase groceries. The Department for Children and Families will be issuing a preloaded EBT card to those who don’t have one yet. If your household is already receiving 3SquaresVT benefits, SEBT benefits for your school-aged children will be loaded on the same card.

You will receive these benefits automatically if your child is:

• Between the age of 6 and 16 at any point since July 2023 or outside of the age 6 and 16 but attends a Vermont Public School or an Independent School that participates in the National School Lunch Program and lives in a household that receives or that received at any time since July 2023:
• 3SquaresVT
• Reach Up, or
• Medicaid while the family’s income was below 185% of the Federal Poverty Level
• Children participating in several other assistance programs may also receive the benefit automatically.
  

Families who meet income guidelines but do not automatically qualify will be able to apply for the benefit in August

Benefits will be mailed out starting July 15, 2024 and continuing throughout the summer.

We encourage families to wait until August before asking about eligibility as most eligible children will receive the benefit automatically. If a child is found eligible, a notice will be mailed to the household. Please keep the EBT cards as they will be used each summer for children who are eligible.

The EBT card can be used at grocery stores, farmers markets and online where EBT is accepted.

Notification and cards will be mailed to the address on file for the program that qualified the child automatically. If you get 3SquaresVT, Reach Up or Medicaid and have recently moved, we recommend updating your mailing address with these programs. This will ensure that you receive the benefit. If you don’t currently participate in these programs, your children could still get the benefit automatically if you apply for them and are approved this summer.

The Summer EBT program is different than the Pandemic EBT program. The Summer EBT program is a permanent program that has income requirements and is only available during the summer, unlike Pandemic EBT where benefits were available throughout the school year and all students were eligible regardless of income.

Receiving Summer EBT benefits does not affect the family’s immigration status.

Additional information, including the application which will be available in August will be posted on summerebt.vermont.gov

If you have questions about the program, please contact DCF’s Economic Services Division at 1-800-479-6151, option 7.

In case you missed their Front Porch Forum post from a few weeks ago, and some updated information about the first of several input opportunities:

Dear Community Members,

In May and June, your Washington Central School Board focused its Configuration Study Committee meetings on the timeline for moving forward with configuration changes. Everyone agrees that any plan to move forward will require engagement of our communities and we had a spirited discussion of how we make this deliberative process as open and accessible as possible.

The board sees three primary steps as our community makes this decision:

1. Gather community input on the viable configuration options, to inform the Board as we determine which option to bring to a vote.
2. Inform the public on the details of the selected configuration: the general structure, the financial model, the benefits and the costs of the selected configuration; and
3. Continue to engage the community on the transition to the new configuration.

These possible configurations do involve the closure of schools. Our District's Articles of Agreement (adopted in 2019, during our ACT 46 process when we became a unified school district to provide for the pre-K through grade 12 education of our resident students) require there to be a vote of the Union Board and a vote in the town where schools would close before any such closure could occur. Such a vote would likely take place on Election Day—November 5, 2024. In order to move forward with such a vote, the Board plans to consider September 18, 2024 as our deadline for making a final decision on adopting a configuration. This timeline allows for a robust voter turnout and also gives the district time to plan a thoughtful transition before the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year when changes could take effect.

Some important things to remember: The district has not yet chosen a configuration to recommend and adopt. We will be hosting community forums in our district towns, engaging with stakeholder groups including town representatives, school staff, parents, etc. (If you think we need to connect with a specific constituency, tell us!) While we can and will share our most detailed, accurate and current financial models for these configurations, those models are being actively developed and we are not going to wait to have them finished before we schedule public forums.

Why are we considering a new configuration? And why are we considering these specific changes? People have asked us these important questions. Our overarching goals for our district’s configuration are that it should:

• Allow class sizes that meet the state’s Education Quality Standards and are sufficient to provide rich instruction
• Maintain full time nursing and counseling in every school
• Maintain or expand enrichment opportunities that are consistent across the system (music, art, world language, etc.)
• Limit or eliminate shared staff positions across schools and very small FTE.

We are currently using 48% of our elementary school capacity. This is projected to drop to 43% usage in two years. Our Board has come to the conclusion that maintaining our district’s six schools as they are will not meet our overarching goals in the future. That consensus has been building even before our district’s voters shared their concerns this March about our increasing costs.

Make no mistake: even with expanded enrichment opportunities at our schools, the two configuration options under consideration both result in significant savings. They would both establish a new, lower baseline of spending. While they wouldn’t assure costs won’t rise in an uncertain future, our hope is that they would put us in a more resilient place to face that future.

We understand that there are significant effects of any reconfiguration of our district. Our Board is made up of community members from every town and we feel passionately about the health and vibrancy of our communities. Any school closure will affect us all, but of course it will most affect the towns where closures occur. People of good faith can disagree with each other about whether most effects are positive or negative. Our job as school board members is to balance many viewpoints and ultimately advocate for what in the long term is in the best interests of students in our district. We hope people continue to engage in a constructive dialogue with us throughout this process. Stay tuned for opportunities to join community forums and focus groups, starting on June 26th and continuing throughout the summer.

Save the Date!!

June 26th, 6:15 pm

At the following locations:

East Montpelier Elementary

Berlin Elementary

Calais Elementary

Doty Memorial

Rumney Memorial

Your School Board

The WCUUSD Board held its last regular meeting of the 23-24 school year this past Tuesday. They will resume their typical schedule in August, and you will be able to find agendas and dates/locations at the Board Resource Page on the website. Of course, stay tuned to our social media and other outlets for more information on upcoming configuration forums.

Website: https://www.wcuusd.org/
Location: 1130 Gallison Hill Road, Montpelier, VT, USA
Phone: (802) 229-0553
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wcsu32