Author Jason Chin Visits CVSD Schools

Science teachers across the district have been looking for ways to integrate science into reading and writing classes while also creating a shared experience for our PreK-8 students. This week, CVSD's PreK-8 buildings are welcoming Jason Chin to share his experiences and insights into writing and illustrating children’s books. Jason Chin, a local author and illustrator, is a diverse author and a Caldecott Medal winner who has written and illustrated a series of children’s books including many on non-fiction science topics.

“I love meeting readers and sharing what I love, and I hope that my visits will help young readers see themselves as artists, scientists, readers and writers.” -Jason Chin

These visits were funded through a grant, the school district, and each school's PTO/family organizations supported it as well.

Thank you, Jason, for such enriching and engaging presentations! Here are a few photos from the visit with Williston students yesterday. He was in Charlotte today and will be in Shelburne and Hinesburg this week as well.

HCS Awarded An Exciting Grant

 

HCS is One of Ten Schools and Districts Selected for the Second Cohort!

Hinesburg Community School (HCS) was selected as one of 10 schools nationally to partner with the national education nonprofit organization, Transcend, to be a part of their second cohort of the Rural Schools Design Community. This is a ten-month program where school administrators and faculty will prioritize reimagining their school model to better serve students and families.

At the start of the ten-month program, each school community will identify a core team to lead the process in their communities. Through this program, teams work locally to enlist their broader community in shaping the vision for their reimagined school. Throughout the 10 months, the groups will also engage in convenings, exploring high-impact topics such as generating a community-led school design process to achieve equitable results for all students, understanding the skills and mindsets needed for young people to thrive in and transform the world, learning how to ensure community aspirations and needs are reflected, and understanding school & district design.

The 2023-2024 Transcend Rural Schools Design Community includes:

• Calistoga Joint Unified School District in Calistoga, CA
• East Range Academy of Technology & Science (ERATS) in Mt. Iron, MN
• Elizabeth City-Pasquotank Public Schools in Elizabeth City, NC
• Hinesburg Community School/Champlain Valley School District in Hinesburg, VT
• Lasara ISD in Lasara, TX
• Los Lunas Schools in Los Lunas, NM
• Riverhead Charter School in Calverton, NY
• Rugby Public Schools in Rugby, ND
• Southern Berkshire Regional School District in Sheffield, MA
• Warren County Schools in Warrenton, NC

The Rural Schools Design Community will take place at no cost to participants thanks to a grant and will commence in August of 2023.

We will provide updates when the work gets underway. Congratulations HCS!

STEAM Works at WCS

Allan Miller and Abbie Bowker, WCS educators, shared this guest post and video about a powerful STEAM project that took place in the latter part of the school year. View the video to learn more about the experience that integrated  many elements of STEAM, and which included ways to support our multi-lingual learners and families. 

This spring a small group of WCS 5th, 6th and 7th graders with a strong interest in art and design were invited to be part of a special pilot project that was part of a Vermont Agency of Education STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math) grant. Nine Vermont middle and high schools were selected for the project, based on their original idea for addressing a local school or community problem. The WCS STEAM Team, led by Art Teacher Abbie Bowker and Design Tech Teacher Allan Miller, proposed that a group of students could improve school climate and teacher morale by having students create a multilingual entryway welcome and individual teacher name signs using laser and vinyl cutting technologies. This video is their project summary, highlighting the process the team used, as well as the positive impact their efforts had around the school. As a pilot it was extremely successful, and the team is exploring how it can continue to make the school community even more welcoming and inclusive through student STEAM creations.

African Drummers and Dance at Allen Brook School

Thank you to Jen Canfield, a kindergarten teacher at the Allen Brook School, for submitting this post. She also wrote the grant to the Williston Families as Partners (FAP) organization that funded this incredible opportunity. The FAP's fundraising efforts provide grants to teachers and programs within the Williston schools. 

Funded by a generous FAP grant, Allen Brook students have had the privilege of learning from Burlington's Jeh Kulu West African Dance and Drum Ensemble. "Jeh Kulu" means community in the Bambara language of Mali and Jeh Kulu's Guinean American teaching artists brought our school community together in the celebration of West African dance and drumming.

Over the course of this week, each class learned a traditional West African dance and, at the end of the residency, we will gather together in a schoolwide celebration to share the dances we learned. We were honored to work with dancer Khadija Bangoura and drummers Ismael and Ibrahime Bangoura. Thank you to these amazing teaching artists for joining our school community for a week!

We can't wait to hear about the final celebration!

Robotics in Action

We are thrilled to share the positive news about the expansion of robotics in CVSD. CVU's Robohawks have led the way on many levels. First, they garnered well-deserved attention for their own success as the Vermont Robotics Champions, which we wrote about last spring here. They traveled to Houston to compete in the FIRST Robotics World Championship. That was an amazing experience, where they connected with and learned from other robotics teams and represented CVSD well.

Also last spring, the Robohawks were awarded a grant to support robotics teams at our other schools. That grant provided materials for teams from each of our K-8 schools, enabling them to learn about, prepare, practice, and then participate in FIRST LEGO League (FLL) competitions. The Robohawks followed that up this year by visiting the K-8 teams and offered guidance, expertise, and enthusiastic support. 

Early this fall, teams were formed and coaches and volunteers were recruited. Funding for the coaches and some additional materials was provided by a number of district grants including a Rowland Foundation grant awarded to Tim O'Leary and Charlie MacFadyen and a CVSD Innovation grant. Tim O'Leary was especially instrumental in organizing and supporting the effort to get the FLL teams underway.

We are proud to say that every one of CVSD's K-8 schools had a team this year and they all participated in the Vermont FIRST LEGO League competition at the end of January. Some photos from that event and comments from coaches and students can be found below. 

From WCS Coach Allan Miller: 

It was great to see all 4 CVSD schools field successful teams this year and a huge thank you to Tim O’Leary and Charlie MacFadyen for sharing the Roland grant funds to help support the teams and Olaf Verdonk and the CVU Robohawks for their financial and technical support. This is probably the most successful full-district initiative I’ve seen in the past 10 years.

From SCS Coach Joey Adams: 

The SCS RoboCats finished up their first season with a resounding crescendo of teamwork and joy at the First Lego League Robotics State Championships at Norwich University on January 28th. The team was composed of over forty SCS students from grades 4th-7th who participated in the after-school sport from October to January. Their dedication to teamwork, building friendships, and having fun were on full display at the competition and throughout the season. The RoboCats worked hard on building robots to solve complex missions that involved learning and applying computer coding skills while working interdependently. The competition also included an intense judging panel that interviewed the RoboCats about their team roles, challenges, and what they learned as individuals and as a team. A quote from many RoboCats during the judging panel and feedback received about this new sport at SCS is best summed up: "...we worked so hard as a team and we learned so much but we also had so much fun while making new friends..." The RoboCats and the coaches can't wait for next season where we plan to roar with joy even louder together! 

From Tim Holcomb and CCS:

The kids worked really hard in completing several missions and getting their attachments to cooperate. With lots of innovation and creativity, they were proud of (and surprised) at how well they performed at the competition. As a team, we are looking forward to growing and continuing our program.

From HCS Student Jo Reiley:

On January 28, 2023, twenty-six teams gathered at Norwich University for the FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL) Statewide Championship. Among the teams was a group of ten HCS students from 4th through 8th grade gathered at Norwich to test their coding skills and teamwork. They raced against another team’s robot to complete a set of missions in the span of two and a half minutes. They had been preparing for this moment since October, starting out by just doing a couple of team building activities then slowly escalating into building complex Lego builds including wind turbines, as well as researching a chosen community problem to face for the Innovation Project.

FLL was originally founded by Dean Kamen in 1998. He worked with the owner of the LEGO group Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen to create a fun, STEM, teamwork emphasizing competition. Since then, teams from around the country have been working to code their robot and figure out what their Innovation Project is going to be about.

The team from HCS, or “Platinum Builders,” chose to do three different missions and got set on making those perfect. Their Innovation Project on the other hand was about turbines and their ability to collect energy. No one knew each other very well in the beginning but throughout the past couple of weeks, they have created quite a bond with each other. They hope that their team will grow next year and can’t wait to partake in the competition again.

- HCS coaches are Stephanie Bruning and Sunshine Ouimette

And finally, the Robohawks did it again and defended their title last weekend as Vermont state champions! Here's a description from coach Olaf Verdonk. 

CVU hosted the annual Vermont FIRST Tech Challenge Robotics Championship this past weekend. There were 19 robotics teams from all over Vermont and this is the second year that CVU has entered TWO teams into the tournament; the varsity squad RoboHawks (#5741) and the JV squad RoboRedhawks (#22683). You may recall that last year the RoboHawks qualified for the World Championship...well this year both teams were outstanding!
This year CVU will be sending not one team to the World Championship, but BOTH teams!

The JV team managed to outplay the varsity team and led the way to the afternoon playoff stages. The JV team created an alliance partnership with the varsity team and together this CVU alliance won the tournament! The best of three finals were SUPER exciting with the CVU alliance winning the last match by only 4 points! The tournament win gives the JV team a berth for the World Championship in Houston, TX. Not to be outdone by the JV team, the varsity RoboHawks team were selected as the prestigious Inspire Award champions as the best team and robot in the tournament which qualified them for the World Championship in Houston, TX in April.

The RoboHawks won several other awards due to their outstanding work in all aspects of the competition. They vastly outscored all teams in the judged presentation, design, and engineering portfolio events of the tournament.

This document outlines all their awards, as well as description of the semi-final and final knockout stage matches.

RoboHawks:
Crawford Phillips, Jared Kennedy, Sam Yager, Violet Fennern, Jack Gourlay, James Haines, Addison Hoopes, Joe Jacobs, Jaden Parker

RoboRedhawks:
Clay Nicholson, Braden Griffin, Will Akerly, Gavin Blackburn, Jacob Graham, with support from Rhett Gardner and Sean Maynard

Congratulations and well done to all students, coaches, and volunteers! 

 

What Is ESSER and What Does that Have to Do With The Budget?

Kelly Bowen, CVSD School Board Finance Committee Chair, has shared the following on Front Porch Forum in each CVSD town. It's the next in a series of posts to help inform voters about the proposed budget for 2022-2023. 

Dear CVSD Community Members and Voters,

This is the third post in a series to update you on the upcoming 2022-2023 proposed school district budget. Look for bi-weekly updates on Front Porch Forum or other school news outlets.

In this post, I will talk about the third installment of ESSER funding including: What does ESSER stand for? Where do ESSER funds come from? How much money will CVSD receive in this third grant? How does ESSER impact CVSD? While ESSER funds are not included in our budget financials, it is important for taxpayers to understand how these federal funds impact CVSD.

What do ARP and ESSER stand for?

ARP is the American Rescue Plan of 2021. ESSER is the acronym for the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. ESSER Funds were allocated in three separate grant offerings. ESSER 1, ESSER 2, and this final round of funds ARP ESSER.

Where do ARP ESSER funds come from?

ESSER funds are federal tax dollars that the US Government allocated to schools to support pandemic recovery. CVSD receives funds via the Vermont Agency of Education (AOE) that manages Vermont’s grant.

How much money will CVSD receive?

ESSER funds are allocated to each school district based on a formula that considers the proportion of students receiving free and reduced-price meals to the whole of the student population. Like any grant, all ESSER funds come with spending restrictions, and ARP ESSER funds must be used over the next three years.

CVSD's ARP ESSER grant amount is $4,351,752 or $374 per student/per year of the three year grant term. This 4.4 million dollar grant is welcome and will be used constructively. But, to keep it in fiscal perspective, compared to our annual cost per pupil, the ARP ESSER grant translates to $374/per student or less than 2% of annual per student spending ($18,454.)

For the upcoming 2022-2023 year, ARP ESSER funds will be used to fund eleven professional positions including: social workers, school counselors, and reading and math specialists.

For details about all ESSER Funds including ARP ESSER Funding and CVSD’s COVID Recovery Plan visit: https://sites.google.com/cvsdvt.org/cvsdrecovery/home

As Finance Committee Chair, I appreciate and share the public’s concern for fiscal conservatism. Please reach out to me: kbowen@cvsdvt.org if I can be of assistance.

Kind regards,

Kelly A. Bowen, CVSD Finance Committee Chair

Please join the CVSD INFORMATIONAL MEETING via Zoom on Monday, February 28, 2022, at 5:00. ZOOM meeting information: https://www.cvsdvt.org/budget or directly: https://cvsdvt-org.zoom.us/j/88634652241 Meeting ID: 886 3465 2241 - Passcode: cvsd11

Phone Participation: 1-646-876-9923 - Passcode: 854788

More information:

Budget Page www.cvsdvt.org/budget
Annual Report https://www.cvsdvt.org/Page/602
2022-2023 Budget Flyer https://bit.ly/CVSDBudgetFlyerFY23
Budget FAQ’s https://bit.ly/CVSDBudgetFY23FAQs

See the Annual Warning on the budget page of our website for all of the ballot articles. We encourage all eligible residents in Champlain Valley School District towns to vote on March 1st or earlier.

Hands Up Celebration Held in Williston

 

(l to r: Danielle Doucette, Youth Services Assistant, Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, Cara Clopton, Library Media Specialist Allen Brook School, Bonnie Lord, Youth Librarian, Dorothy Alling Memorial Library)

The Dorothy Alling Memorial Library (DAML) in Williston was the proud recipient of an American Library Association (ALA) Libraries Transforming Communities: Focus on Small and Rural Libraries grant this year. They worked in collaboration with Allen Brook School on a special project to provide a free opportunity for family literacy engagement centered on creating a welcoming and inclusive community.

The grant was used to offer Brave Books Bags to each second-grade family at Allen Brook School earlier this fall. The bags included two picture books and two chapter books to spark conversations, understandings, and build caring, valued relationships. These books, created by Black authors and illustrators, were chosen to encourage conversations around racial equity and inclusiveness. The books range from picture books to middle grade titles, to encourage conversations amongst the very young as well as older family members.

As a follow-up to the distribution of the Brave Book Bags the community was invited to a celebration of the project on the Town Green today. Allen Brook Librarian Cara Clopton read the picture book Hands Up! by Breanna J. McDaniel to celebrate social justice and the partnership between DAML & Allen Brook School. The story will also be featured on a Storywalk® on the Town Green this month.

The photos below were contributed by Cara Clopton. Thank you for your part in making this effort and event happen. 

Empower Youth Leadership

In the fall of 2020, Kathy Batty, HCS School Counselor, and Mary Muroski, HCS 5th grade Teacher, received a $25,000 SEL in Action grant from the NoVo Foundation and Education First for their Empower Youth Leadership Project. The Project is focused on the creation of SEL Leaders in the district’s middle schools. With this funding, they have been working to coordinate student Empower Youth Leaders meetings and have hosted two school-based Empower Youth Leadership Conferences.

Throughout the year, middle-level students from each of the CVSD sending schools and VLA have met weekly. The focus of these Empower Youth Leaders meetings has changed over the course of the year. Initially, the students worked to create a unified vision and logo. Then, they worked on community service projects in the Winter. This Spring, the students developed SEL lesson plans and provided leadership classes in K-2 classes. This effort was very successful - despite the fact that the instruction was all done virtually, using Google Meets.

Recently, Mary and Kathy hosted Empower Youth Leadership Conferences for all 6th graders at Hinesburg Community School and Charlotte Central School. The conference started with students discovering what they all had in common and identifying their hopes and dreams for a better world. Then, the students were engaged with students in Uganda in a live conversation on Google Meet. Based on student feedback this was one of the highlights of the day. HCS students heard from students in Uganda about their daily life and aspects of their culture. In both schools, sixth graders asked the students in Uganda about the effect that COVID has had on them. We learned that the students there have struggled to have enough food to eat and are still not back in school. The conference also included three workshops aimed at teaching the personal leadership skills of effective communication, financial literacy, and goal-setting. The day ended with students learning how to practice and express gratitude as a way to bring abundance and positivity into their lives.

In her letter of support for the project, Superintendent Elaine Pinckney wrote, “The Empower Youth Project complements our district’s commitment to meeting the social and emotional learning needs of all our students. The vision of CVSD is to help all students develop skills to understand and manage their emotions, show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions needed in order to be successful for school and life”. 

For more information, please feel free to contact Mary (mmuroski@cvsdvt.org) and Kathy (kbatty@cvsdvt.org). Please visit www.ourclp.org to learn more about the Children’s Legacy Partnership Foundation.

Photos of Empower Youth Leaders teaching in K-2 classrooms:

Cracking the Code: Computer Science Gets a Boost

The Champlain Valley School District congratulates both Tim O’Leary (SCS) and Charlie MacFadyen (CVU) on being named fellows by the Rowland Foundation. Tim and Charlie are both Digital Learning Leaders in their schools.

Tim O'Leary and Charlie MacFadyen

The 2020-2021 Rowland Foundation fellowships provide Vermont secondary school educators with a unique professional development and leadership opportunity and resources (through a one-year, $100,000 grant) to positively affect student achievement and the culture and climate of their respective schools. The Foundation supports proposals which:

• will lead to systemic change in the school, particularly in its culture and climate
• are visionary and comprehensive (what percentage of the population will they serve)
• are sustainable after The Rowland Foundation completes its funding
• are exportable to other schools. The Rowland Foundation is keenly interested in affecting change throughout Vermont.
• have the complete support of the principal or head of school. This will be a key element of the interview process by the Executive Director prior to the selections.

Tim and Charlie, on behalf of SCS and CVU, have been awarded this Rowland Fellowship as co-applicants who, together, represent a PreK-12 continuum of instruction in the largest district in Vermont. The project aims to address the inequities and marginalization of females, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming youth that occur within Computer Science (CS) education and the workforce. It envisions a world where all can become creators, change-makers, and leaders. Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace prize winner and educational activist, is quoted in their proposal saying, “every girl deserves to take part in creating the technology that will change our world, and change who runs it.”

From their proposal, titled, “Cracking the Code: Closing the Gender Gap in Computer Science,” Tim and Charlie state:

"Over the coming year, the project will support the development of a K-12 computer science program because we believe schools must assume a critical role to create computer science learning opportunities. Otherwise, students will continue to develop identities informed by a world where males far outpace female participation in this area. Nationally, only 28% of the students who have taken an AP Computer Science exam over the last three years identified as female. And, the disparity is 8.5 % greater in Vermont. We bear a responsibility to dismantle this inequality by creating new systems, and we plan to develop a program to do just that."

SCS and CVU are uniquely positioned to engage in this work and embrace an awesome responsibility to share innovative teaching and learning practices as it develops. The school district looks forward to supporting the partnerships and collaboration that Tim and Charlie will lead over the coming year to create a more equitable future for our students.

Tim and Charlie’s proposal to research and implement a framework for the Shelburne Community School will be closely observed so that we can explore this as a model for all of our district PreK-8 schools. Our school district values innovation, design-thinking, and the personalized pursuit of excellence. We are committed to determining ways in which computer science education is provided to all students, PreK-12. The proposal to Crack the Code for SCS and CVU ensures that we’re on the path to success, for all of CVSD.