Hello, and welcome to Town Meeting Television's coverage of Town Meeting Day 2024. This program is part of a series of forums we are bringing you in advance of Town Meeting Day on Tuesday, March 5th. Town Meeting TV hosts forums with all candidates and covers the questions you will see on your ballot, introducing you to community decision makers, and connecting you with issues that shape your local community. You can find all our forums at cctv.org slash 2024 or on our Town Meeting Television YouTube channel, where auto-generated captions are also available. On tonight's program, we will hear from four of five candidates for the Burlington School District Board. Thank you all for joining us. These candidates are Polly Vanderputten for Ward 2, Saja Amogali for Ward 3, Claire Wool for Ward 6, and Bill Church for Ward 8. Not joining us this evening is Lucia Camperiello, and Polly, Saja, Lucia, and Claire are all incumbent candidates. We have prepared a list of questions for each of you, and you will have 90 seconds to answer each question. If you're tuning in live, we welcome your questions at<PHONE_NUMBER>. If you call in, we will do our best to prioritize your question, though we will screen calls to ensure the questions are not repeated. We ask that you share your name, your town that you live in, and that your question be directed at all candidates rather than at a particular candidate. So let's get started with opening statements, and we will begin with Claire Wool. Hi, thank you very much for having us, and boy do we appreciate town meeting TV. We also run a monthly commissioner corner, so thank you for giving us the opportunities of School Board to connect with our citizens of Burlington. My name is Claire Wool. I'm running for a fourth term here in the city of Burlington as a proud parent of three BHS graduates and a volunteer within the schools. I ran for School Board to make a difference and to garner the support of citizens and be transparent, fiscally responsible, and manage day-to-day student outcomes with the help of our dynamic faculty and staff. Thank you. You're welcome. Next candidate, Polly Vanderputten. Okay. Hi. I'm Polly Vanderputten. I am running for School Commissioner in Ward 2, which is a change in that I haven't changed where I live, but there was redistricting approved last March, so I was the Ward 3 candidate for four years. I am running because I'd like there to be stability on the board. I would like there to be continuity, especially with this new tech center. I originally ran because I am a person who benefited from public schools, and I was free and reduced lunch my entire life, and I feel that public education is essential to students finding better opportunities, and I want to help to support them. Thank you. Next candidate is Sasha Amagali. Yes. Hi, everyone. My name is Sasha Amagali. I'm running for Ward 3. I ran for Ward 8 about two years ago. I relocated. That's how I'm running for Ward 3. I am a recent Burlington High School graduate, and I graduate from UVM, and I'm running for the school board to bring student perspective to the board and also bring diversity to the board. Thank you. Thank you. And our last candidate this evening, Bill Church. Hi, everybody. So I'm in Ward 2. Ward 8. Ward 8. Ward 8. You're in Ward 2. Yeah. I don't want to be in Ward 2. So I'm here because a couple of weeks ago, there was a phone message from Claire asking for my son Sam's phone number, and everybody knows Sam, and I've known Claire since Edmunds. So I gave that number, but I knew it was something different than that. And so after talking to Sam, you called me back and said you're looking for somebody for the school board. And I said, probably not a good idea, only call me if you can't find anybody. And later you called and said, after 19 knows, would I do it? And I agreed. And the reason I agreed is I think we should have some service component of living in Burlington. And I do have a, not an educational background, but I've spent a lot of time in schools, in universities, and I bring sort of a scientific background to this. So I'm very much time to learn. I'm here to learn. Okay. Let's start with some questions. First, we're going to turn to the school budget. Do you support this year's school budget of 119.6 million and associated tax impact of 13.97 percent? And how will you address the challenges facing the state education fund and the impact on Burlington schools and taxpayers? And we will start answers with Polly. Okay. So I do support this year's budget of 119.6 million. Sorry. It's a big number. And I want to acknowledge that and that the tax impact is also quite high. There are a number of factors outside of our control, which I'm sure many people have heard about already, the common level of appraisal, which is affecting school districts across the state, the bond, which we voted to approve here. That's not outside of our control. That's a great thing. But that is definitely something impacting our budget. And then increases in wages and benefits for teachers, which I am a public school teacher and I could advocate very much for why I think that's the right thing. How will we address the challenges? I think one of the things that keeps coming up for me as being really frustrating is lack of state funding for education construction. And this is coming to light not just here, but in many other places. We are the only school district that had a school shut down by the state. And there are other districts being tested right now for the things that shut down our school. And I want to know how is the state going to fund education construction going forward because our schools badly need it? Thank you. Same question, Sasha? Yeah. I am in support of the budget. I know it's a big number. I'm not a homeowner and I can't speak about taxes. But I do understand how it can impact you guys and the community. But we also need to think about the challenges that we have and about the students we have. We've been closed since, I believe, 2020. And recent graduate students had to spend the rest of their senior year in a mall. And it's not an ideal thing that we want our students and our kids to do. It's a lot, it's challenging, but I do want the state support for this because we want the high school. We want our students to go back to normal high school and be able to, you know, have the experience of being in a normal classroom and just being able to be in a high school. Thank you. Bill, do you support the budget? So I do. But it's not because I know the details of the budget. I've only started to do the research on it. I think that anything short of support is probably, doesn't realize the trauma that the school district has been through the last few years. And to lose the entire school, I think, is not the time to say, well, we can't afford the new vision of what we need to have. It's an opportunity, really. And so I do support the budget. Hopefully next year at this time, I'll know how it was developed. The only thing I might ask would be that the budget reflects the vision of what the school district and the community wants, you know, and that becomes clear. And it's hard sometimes, it's easy sometimes to just increase it to cover the costs that we've negotiated or the costs that we anticipate. But I'd like to see that it actually drives the school budget to a higher level of excellence because it really is probably the most important thing in Burlington that attracts business, attracts, keeps people here. We export our smartest kids. Okay. Thank you. And Claire. Well, our school budget would have seen a 5% increase this year if it wasn't for the closure of our high school. That's incredible for citizens to understand and learn. The impact that the state closing our high school and supporting, having a moratorium for the past 14 years on construction aid, basically ignoring the problem of failing infrastructures, sick schools like ours. So we, 76% of Burlingtonians approved our bond. And we were so overwhelmed with that support for all the reasons the three of you have talked about the importance of public schools in our community. We have 11 public schools. So our commitment to follow through as taxing as it is on all of our homeowners and our property owners has to, I hope, prevails. I'm supporting this yes because we have to follow through on this campus that is incredibly daunting. But we are on budget. We are on schedule for an opening of fall 2026. And again, we need citizen support to address the state issues. The state issues around all of our how we fund public schools. Herding taxpayers by our CLA increase, even though we are an attractive state to move to is not reflective of people's desires to not want to support public school budgets. Thank you. That's troublesome. That's hard for them. So the Burlington School District's current strategic plan identifies five priorities. Being and well-being, deeper learning for every student, reimagined high school, educators who look like our students, and relationship-based communities through restorative practices. Which of these are you most excited to work on and how will you do it? We'll start with Sasha. Yeah. I support all of it. I'm very excited about all of it. But I have to go with educators who look like us. As someone who went to Burlington High School, I didn't see a lot of that. Someone who come from a different country and went through high school, we didn't have a lot of educators who do look like me, who understands what my culture is, where I come from, and what challenges am I going to have moving to a different place and being able to just relocate. So educators who look like us, it's something that I'm looking forward for. And I feel like we live in Burlington, it's a very diverse place, and I'm grateful for that. So hopefully having educators who can understand our students and our community and who can bring a different perspective to the school. Great. Thank you. Bill, what part of the strategic plan appeals to you? So I hate to dodge a question, but I have read it, I have looked at it. But I think I need to look at the other school board members and get their input and actually receive some mentoring over what some of this is meant. I wasn't part of the process. My mind goes to how are we going to measure it, but I think there are metrics in there, so I think that that's encouraging. So that's something I have to just learn more about. Okay. Thank you. Claire? I always think of sense of belonging and relation-based communities. We work really hard in each of our school districts for families to feel engaged and coming out of the pandemic, coming out of, again, unique situations from school closures to construction, to still managing the post-effects of the pandemic. That sense of belonging, we just really brought back our parent-teacher organizations this past September for the first time over two and a half years, and families, public school families, and communities in Burlington that support us are absolutely vital to our success. And it has felt like faculty and staff have been doing it alone for the last couple of years. I mean, we rarely, I don't know if we've been able to invite the public into our schools with a grand reopening, because we were still managing students and their sense of belonging and safety and well-being. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Polly? Yeah. So I was on the board for creating the strategic plan, and so I agree with Saja that I feel they're all really important. We wouldn't have put them in there if we didn't feel that way as a board. I'd say probably for me, deeper learning for every student. Like I said, I'm a public school teacher, and I have a daughter in the school district, and I have this kind of awareness of the system and some of the shifts and changes in terms of curriculum and what we're teaching and how we're teaching it. I think one thing I'm really excited about that we invested in recently is a literacy program to teach reading across all of our elementary schools using phonics. It's I think called a phonics-based system. I might not be getting the exact perfect phrase, but anyway, to have that kind of stability across all of the elementary schools and to also have something that is going to benefit our students very clearly, there's a lot of evidence pointing to phonics being a superior way to teach reading. I'm really excited about what is going to come out of that for those students. Great. Thank you. So we're going to change to challenges. What is the biggest challenge facing the Burlington School District, and how would you use your seat on the school board to address this issue? Bill, you start. So as an observer, I'm astounded at the complexity of the building and the financial commitment that a community has to make to that in addition to the increase that we have to have. I really think the time that we have to get it right maybe is not the time to expand too many of the programmatic elements until we get the building right. And I do know it takes a tremendous amount of time from the school board and everybody at the school to get that right. And so I think just the financial impact is really something and it started, our conversation started about the financial impact. And so that's something that I'm aware of. I'd like to see the numbers. I'd like to just understand more about the budget, short-term and long-term, because we really can only do what we can afford. And we can do it better. But I think that once you add a school on top of everything else, it's going to take a couple of years probably to digest that. Okay. Thank you. Claire. Challenges. Yes. Bill said it. We have an enormous project, the largest in the state happening on 52 Institute Road in the city of Burlington. It is daunting. I would say board members don't sleep at night until this is completed. And I believe the mayor, all of our city counselors, any of our civic leaders and citizens are very concerned and supportive. But that is our biggest undertaking right now. We also, just for citizens to know, have the Burlington Technical Center, an amazing flexible pathway, opportunity for students. And we are currently using our academic dollars for all the spaces that we have to rent for being displaced. So getting our public school district in order, our house in order with this campus, the consolidation of all of our rental properties, the large move ahead, the preparation for staff. It's not just the high school. We've made some changes with pre-K and all of our elementary schools. So really getting a sense of space, fiscal responsibility is, I feel, our biggest challenge and for the citizens of Burlington to understand that, as Polly mentioned, a majority of this percentage increase was out of our control. I haven't even touched upon the 17% increase in health care throughout the state. We worked with the state for statewide bargaining for health care for all educators in the state of Vermont, thinking it would produce competitive rates. And we've seen nothing but double digits in health care costs. Health care costs. Thank you. A for-profit system, that's concerning.  I concur with Bill about the complexity of the budget and of making the case to taxpayers for how much money we need and why we need it. I think something that is very, I don't know, it's challenging for me because I work within the system is to see what decisions are made and why they are made. So when a program is removed or cut, is it being replaced with something else and that we have to make these decisions? We can't really live in this kind of idealistic way about education, like we would like to have this and we think this is great, we're always having to make difficult decisions. Just one example is that world languages were cut at our middle schools several years ago and that was a budget decision in a time of crisis and we have yet to fully restore those programs, which then has an effect on the high school world language programs. That's just one tiny example of a programmatic shift that happens and trying to find your way back into what you see as important and what you want and what the community wants when it comes to those budget decisions is very challenging. Thank you. And Saja? Yeah, I definitely agree with everyone. I think for now our biggest challenge is building the high school but not only building it and having it running and functioning. We do need staff. We want to transition from the mall to the high school is going to be hard on the teacher's side, the staff and the parents and the kids too. Being able to go back to normal running school is going to be hard and challenging but also recently we have made a lot of cuts through our school programs and classes and all of that due to the budget and being able to listen to the community and support them and give them what they need. But there's a lot of things out of our hands and we can't have control over and just seeing, like explaining to parents and having parents understand that we support this class or we support this program but there's so much we can do so it's just, it's challenging but I do think, you know, the transition to the high school will be very challenging. Okay. Let's talk a little bit about student life. How can Burlington School's best support neurodivergence students? Claire, we'll start with you. Yeah, we talked about this term and how it's being used these days so students that need acute care spaces for de-escalation, spaces for care, we really are providing social services on a daily basis to our student population and that can begin, it does begin in pre-K all the way up to 12th grade and we also have students past the 12th grade that we serve and how can we support through qualified staff and by attracting qualified staff and retaining staff, Chittenden County is incredibly competitive so making sure that our wages and benefits are attractive for people to want to come work in Burlington. So I think it begins with, you know, teaching excellence and having the care that we need for students. Okay. Thank you. Polly. Yeah, this term neurodivergent is very broad like it covers a broad range of descriptors in terms of student learning style and ability and evaluations that might come about for students for optimal learning conditions. I think first we need to follow the guidelines that have been released by the state of Vermont around the multi-tiered systems of support. They're referred to as MTSS, that's what it stands for. There are some new guidelines for that that are meant to support all students. I would also say that having highly trained teachers who are aware of the range of learning styles every single student we have is a human being and every human being is unique so they're all going to have unique and interesting ways to learn. We can't just put them in one kind of sort of category although that's a simpler way to collect data, it's just not possible. And I would also say having teachers who are trained in recognizing that neurodivergent does not just mean those who are trying to get to proficiency at grade level but may have abilities beyond grade level and how to meet their needs and that could be in math, English, like language skills, it could be in art, it could be in sports. There are a lot of different ways we could address this. Thank you. Also, Sasha. Yeah, I definitely agree with what Polly said versus being able to recognize that our students are different and that's okay. We all learn in a different way. And just being able to recognize that, that's a big step to help and support the students and having training to staff and being able to provide training to staff and also the students give them the opportunity to know that there is resources and there is other resources that we have in the school that we can do for the way of learning and supporting parents with what they need and this is not only about students and the educators also, the parents and supporting the parents and directing the parents toward their right resources is things that we can do to help students and their families. Great. Thank you. Bill, same question. So in my simplistic way right now and I'm learning a lot every day, the mission of the school district is really to provide all our students and all our young people an opportunity to go forward in their lives successfully, however we define that. And I've come to understand that it isn't just the skills and the knowledge necessarily but it's also the safety, the health and the respect of the students themselves which are equally as important as general chemistry. So how do you do both? I wonder whether things that are new such as neurodiversity or if there are technological approaches that could be used somehow integrated into the program that would help offset that. In my own background, the heartbeat of the teacher was always the most important thing to me. I've had several teachers throughout my career that made a big difference to me and I know we have that at Burlington. I saw that with my kids. But can there be technology that helps support some of this in ways that overcomes the limitation in staff, overcomes the limitations in other things? That's how I think about it now, my change, but you guys will show me better, I hope. Well said. Thank you. How can the school district ensure safety of its students and teachers in our schools and in the community? Polly, let's start with you. I am going to give a counterintuitive answer to this and say my biggest concern right now around safety is smartphones and cell phones. That there's this perception that students need to have these and I think there are legitimate concerns with parents thinking about some of the crises facing our city right now with some violence that we've seen and kind of unpredictable behaviors from people and thinking like, well, my child is walking home from school and so I want to be able to communicate with them. But we've had a lot of problems with overall safety in terms of how students interact with other students and I see that as being very directly connected back to phone use and students who interact and communicate with each other in ways that are not appropriate, meaning like bullying or teasing or isolating and it's relentless for them. It's 24 hours a day. So I think that creating a really good policy and with that procedures around phones would actually help a lot with safety and one more quick thing. It does not help when there's a crisis to have students reaching out to parents because parents then rush to the school and clog airways and that is not actually the best thing for emergency responders so I'll end there. Thank you. Saja. Yeah. There is not a straight when I answer to that. I think right now we're facing a lot of challenging in the state itself and then in the schools too. I do think that it all starts from the students home so whatever that's going on in their home and whatever foundations they have can be brought to the schools itself and it can be challenging if parents want their kids to do certain things and then as a school we want them to do something else and it's hard if there is not that like I would say like the middle line between both of them but I would say that as a school if we can start some policies towards safety and maybe more training and education to student toward the like I said the cell phone news and how can it be dangerous and other things to it but really there's no one correct answer to that. Thank you. Bill. So I'll share a little personal something one of my children when they were attending Berlin in high school was fairly traumatized by school events that were happening outside of the state and I don't know whether this goes back to all traumas are now heavily advertised and on the media or something but it was a concern to me as a parent and so that's the reality to me anyway and the idea of cell phones I really like that idea to disconnect our kids so they can learn and take away some of the distraction and in fact I'm trying to read the educational stuff in the papers these days that there was a study recently that they perform better without phones they don't have their cell phones and so I think that's something that may be doable I think it has immediate consequences it calms the entire situation down and I would be in support of something like that but I think there has to be some safety element the world has gotten much different so thank you and Claire. Yeah we are in an urban location and school safety is absolutely paramount to our students well being we ride the public buses for transit majority of our schools are walking so our communities support in ensuring safety for all our students to get to and from school each day is incredibly important I know through our community updates through our superintendent when things have happened in the city that are concerning and alarming we immediately reach out to the community and let people aware of what's going on our administrators do the same thing when events happen surrounding our students outside I'm talking of our campuses but to Polly's point and everyone's also input cell phones have been a struggle over the last five years we used to say wait till eight or wait till high school but we're seeing cell phones in elementary schools and we tried an unplugged day at BHS and we got more pushback from parents than we did children in wanting to you know unplug for the day so I believe we've passed policy or we introduced our first ever cell phone policy at our Hunt Middle School and our Edmonds Middle School this year and we'll be discussing high school as well and our other schools. Thank you continuing in the same theme because you touched on this a little bit how can Burlington schools best support the mental health of students and we'll start with I'll start right now like mental health is challenging you know especially after COVID we've seen a lot of changes from being you know at home doing online schooling to be able to go back and socialize with other students and you know kids mental health is a big subject that it's important to recognize and to address it we should be able to do trainings to staff to provide a safe place for students to be able to talk and to express their concerns sometimes especially speaking from someone who had a lot of issues with mental health my mom like doesn't understand that is something that can affect anyone and sometimes being able to speak to someone outside without having parents knowing it's hard and so being able to give support to the student and also their families and explaining to the families what is mental health and how we can affect their kids and being able to provide the right resources and there's a lot of stigma around mental health and it shouldn't be because it's just if we have the right resources it shouldn't be an issue but educating people about it also it's something that can be very helpful. Thank you Bill. So I would second what Saja has said about mental health it really is part of the family situation and I'm not sure it can be addressed individually in the school without the involvement of the families but I think there's an opportunity for the school to work with the family which families do anyway it can be taking their kids to school to taking them to sporting events to helping them for their homework but in a mental health situation I think the school the family is the should be the focus to help with the students integration and back into the school so the resource maybe needs to go a little broader than just on one on one it's just how I would think about it right now. Okay thank you Claire. Yeah we can't do it alone our community partners the Howard Center all of our individual experts in the field that we lean on this is a new aspect of public schools not it was always there but I love what you said Saja the stigma behind it we try and make it incredibly we have mental health awareness students talk about it and I believe in my you know didn't exist in my generation and that it we have in our schools sometimes posters that we put up to say if you're hurting or if you need support you know here's someone you could speak to our guidance departments are phenomenal and our guy in elementary school we do have a guidance a lot you know that guidance teacher that goes around to each of our classes middle school is kind of you know tough and supporting you know we have a health ed class but I think we can do a better job in our middle schools not more robust because I think that's where a lot of students start to recognize it in our high school you know working again with the support with the families and and our staff I think it is daunting but with the support of our community and families I'm hopeful that each student receives the care they need. Thank you Polly. So how can we best support student mental health first I would say education around cell phones and cell phone use so banning them for the school day but then it is not just during the school day that they are used and I think that that education needs to go not just to students but to families to help them understand I think as a society we've been kind of horn swoggled by the tech companies about the necessity of these things in our lives and I think we really need to address how they have altered students developmentally on the emotional plane on the ability to concentrate and focus and on their ability to interact with each other and with their families I think it's changed all of us I also think having highly trained teachers who create classroom environments that give a sense of belonging and a sense to every student that their voice matters is essential to supporting mental health and it kind of eases the burden on some of the school counselors and social workers that we rely on so heavily because some of the issues that these students have could be somewhat resolved by feeling comfortable in the classroom. Can I ask a question? Do you want my phone in? Go right ahead. What part does substance abuse play in the mental health issues in the school? That's a great question so why don't we treat it as one of the forum questions. Do you have an answer? Not that I'm familiar with I think it's more than we want to acknowledge and is it a mental health issue the substances are being used at interfere with their education or is that a maybe that's a neurodivergent I don't know I'm just not sure what even what currently happens now over these kinds of issues. Okay well with our incumbents why don't we start with you Claire and see if we can answer that question. Yeah I'm just my mind is blanking on the awareness program that we use and we have incredible staff members that do that they do a survey every year for students about usage and the students fill them out in advisory and in homeroom and it hasn't over the last the reports that we have seen or viewed it hasn't been a glaring use issue of percentage a high percentage and but I I would have to go back and I didn't wouldn't want to be firm in my conviction about that but I do think we have a population of students that suffer in their home life and are struggling with maybe potential substance or abuse that's happening in their home life that they're managing. I don't know that much about it and you would think I would because I'm a high school teacher but I don't have a very clear sense of substance abuse among my students I think that there's actually probably less of it than there was when I was in high school I do have concerns about how easy it is to access marijuana especially with the legalization of marijuana and how vapes they're an issue like in bathrooms in the school and because they're odorless essentially and so there are a lot of things that can be accessed that are pretty intense in a school day if you wanted to but I I don't I might don't have as much of a concern about that as I do about cell phones and addiction to say video games and cell phones and that kind of thing. Sasha yeah I'm not 100% like familiar with that but I do think a big issue is that it's the access similar to having access to a cell phone or a video game there's a lot of easy access to that and it comes back to being at home and if your parents struggling with substance abuse you have access to it and you might not you know understand how dangerous that can be but you're also carrying all that the trauma and the heavy lifting of you trying to deal with things inside your home but also outside without bringing it and I think that's something that we can work on on a state level since we are dealing with it whether it's our students or our friends or families or neighbors or it's it's an issue in the state of Vermont that needs to be addressed on a higher level and I do hope we don't see a big issue of that in our schools. Okay thank you thank you for adding an important question. Yeah I think so and normalizing cannabis you know we have a one of our schools elementary school is you know within walking distance to dispensary so I think that is we're just going to begin to see I think you know parents concerned about the location of potential dispensaries around schools. Thank you. Let's talk about the academics so last year standardized test results suggested that a proportion of Vermont students proficient in math and English decreased during the pandemic and has not made significant improvements since. So how do you measure the success of the school district and let's start with Bill. How do I measure the success of the students. I'll tell you how I do it right now. I work at a biotech company and we hire very sharp we look for people that are going to stay in Vermont chemistry and science majors and there's a lot of remedial science they have to do very few of them have any writing skills and these are high GPA college grads. I'm concerned that some of this stuff is not carrying through from high school onward it could be distractions from media and it's a significant to get them up to speed on even basic science things is a lot of investment and it has to be and it's important for them but I just I puzzle why they can't write and I puzzle why they don't have an instinct to read and to layer on then the technical aspects of that to it's it's hard we educate our workers and so I deal with it's a lot when I look at a resume I do look to see if they were on high school sports teams. I'm not so much swayed by AP courses because I think a lot of that I'm not sure the the rigor of some of that stuff and they all like to talk about their semester abroad. But I really think that even in the college level that they're not really getting that the focus they need to have a career or a professional job. Okay, thank you. Claire, what is your response? I recently read this article about the state test scores. And I think it is incredibly challenging to think that with the two years that students have lost or the learning that they did at home, math and science at home in your bedroom. It was a loss of of learning.  And we rarely hold students back in middle school. But, you know, that's a disservice to their learning. If it's a if it's stigmatized that you're staying back if you're not proficient. And I think we have leaned more towards the well being of a student. In this generation, we offer an opportunity to redo, you know, to learn the content. Again, back in the day, we were never offered to redo. We want students to learn. So the cause of it and the the status, I think the faculty and staff are keenly aware of these test scores. And I think they would look at all of us and say, we're doing the best we can at this time. But yes, there are times where most faculty will say, can we have a social and emotional reset in our school? Because we're having a hard time focusing. And I think that is impacting our learning. Thank you, Polly. On the one hand, I really appreciate standardized tests because they are a way to measure student abilities. On the other, I'm skeptical about them. The standardized tests we have given have changed at least three times since I've been a high school teacher. And so what is the test? Is it on a computer? Is a student comfortable with using a computer? Who designed the test? How did they design? I have a lot of questions about the tests. And I'm wary of using them as a basis for making certain decisions about programming or the abilities of our students overall. I absolutely agree with Bill about lack of interest in reading and the ability to write, having declined and have quite a few comments about that. One, we made, we did a grand experiment in the pandemic by shutting down schools and going to remote learning, which was something that was talked about as a way for school districts to save money in the future. And then the future came to us and it has proven to be a disaster on many levels to teach that way. At least we learned that, but we are now having to play catch up with our students. And I think the way that reading was taught definitely hampered things for students. It was a lot about guess the word, not actually know the word. And finally, I would say back to phones. We are, we are collectively as a society, not paying as much attention. Everything is a sound bite. Thank you. Sasha. What I'm worried about is the test, the standard standardized test is giving to every students and one test that's giving to every student the same way. But the way we teach our students is different. We're isolating our students. We're provide like especially new Americans. We are not giving them the materials that they need. We are isolating them. We're putting them all in one classroom. And we're providing them with little of English or math. And we're expecting them to do well as other students who were born to speak English, who their parents are college grad or have some educational background. And we can't, we can't measure the success of our students if we are isolating them within the school. And it's not only like, and especially COVID didn't help when everyone went online.   So just being able to recover from that's going to take a while and then maybe implementing a lot of after school programs that can help our students with reading or writing and just providing them the space for it. Thank you. Okay. So let's talk about language access for the diversity of students in the district. How can the Burlington school district meet the needs of students and families whose primary language is not English? Let's start with you, Claire. I am extremely proud of our multilingual, multilingual liaisons. We speak 37 languages at Burlington High School. And we last year, so last year, the board approved that we support our liaisons year round 12 months out of the year. Originally, they were just paid for the school year. And we wanted to acknowledge that their work in the summer was just as robust as it was throughout the school year with families coming into the district, interpreting materials that they need to prepare for the summer, our summer programming, also our fall programming, follow up with teachers and students. But our language access, I couldn't be prouder. And I will also say this is an example of a school district that not only has such an incredibly diverse student population, but a supportive multilingual liaison department, that we know other school districts have the breadth and depth of what Burlington has. And we, as a school board, passed with the support of many throughout the state. We created a task force and supported and passed Act 127, which was about weighted pupil, longer conversation. But it acknowledged school communities that supported students that needed that needed resources than other comparable districts in Chittenden County and throughout the state. It acknowledged that. Thank you. Polly. I appreciate very much about Burlington that we do have, relatively speaking, a robust program for our multilingual learners, especially the multilingual liaisons. I think that we could do a better job of how we integrate and reach out to families that we tend to rely on a lot of social media and email and certain modes of communication that might not be culturally exactly where we should be with some of these different groups of people and also linguistically very challenging, just as a mode of communication. And I also would, I really appreciate what Saja was saying earlier because I work with a lot of new American students. And I would like to see more integration, like for them to get the support that they need in terms of English language learning, but more integration into the school community so that we are celebrating what they bring from their cultural perspective and their language. And, you know, I feel that they're the hope. They're the future. So I would love to see more of that kind of approach taken. Thank you. Saja. Yeah. I'm very proud of Burlington District because we are doing a really great job of, you know, giving access and including new American families with what's going on in this school, probably more than any other districts. As Paul said, we can definitely do better, especially including families in the school. I know, like, students are aware of what's going on in the school and outside the school. And sometimes it's hard for the families to be able to get in the school, understand how their kids are doing in the school and what can they, what kind of support they can give their kids, you know, whether that can be, you know, your kid is doing great and we just want to tell you that or your kids needs this extra help. And we have this program for your kid that you can help. And if you need help at home, whether it's like being able to bring your kids to school or providing transportation or any other things that the school definitely can improve on that. But in overall, we are moving toward that right now. And then, again, in the classroom, you know, integrating students with kids who were born here and just having them interact with other students and just seeing different perspectives and not only for the new American, but for the other students to understand and be able to learn something new every day, you know. Thank you. And Bill. I am not talented when it comes to language and is here somewhere and would second that. I think that the linguistics is part of the cultural richness of Burlington and I think it really makes it a special place. I can also see, though, that it's divisive. When we think of areas of this country that have large Hispanic populations, they're enriched by the fact that they can speak more than one language. But I don't know with all the diversity we have here how that can become something that strengthens the school district once it gets away from just the English. And so I can also understand why students who speak languages at home need to have that opportunity to express themselves for safety issues at Burlington. And I think that's important. But I question that the French, the Spanish that the schools try to teach really carries through for the most part, until you are immersed in the culture of that. And so that's just my own background. I speak upper Midwestern English and it's mocked at my house. Okay, thank you. I think we have time for one last question and then closing statements. So what do you understand to be the current level of morale in the district? And what is the role of the school board in retaining good teachers and support staff? We will start with Polly. Okay. I think the current level of morale is pretty good. In that we negotiated a three year contract with teachers recently contract negotiations are super stressful for teachers and for the board doing the negotiation. But I think that's good. I think the consistency of the board has been good. There hasn't been a lot of turnover on the board. And I think that teachers and staff feel confident in our leadership for the most part. There have been some exceptions to that. And that's something that we are working on. How do we retain good teachers and support staff? I think by continuing to trust that they are doing their job and that they are committed to doing their job. Teachers were asked to do insane pivots in the pandemic in terms of supporting mental health of students, teaching online, learning how to use Zoom and technology to communicate. And I think there's certain kind of fatigue coming out of that. And so acknowledging that and saying we still believe in you and you're doing a good job goes a long way. Thank you. Sasha? Yeah. The first thing is being able to give the support to our teachers and staff is very important as a school board. Understanding how hard they work and how their job is very challenging and how can there be a lot of challenges doing, being able to be in school and teaching and providing more than just teaching to students and understanding that and just as Polly said, believing in them and knowing that they are doing the right thing and they will continue doing the right thing and helping our students. And just it's hard right now to be a teacher anywhere else in the country and to be able to provide the support that we can as a board and also as a community.  They do more than what we think and they are sending our kids to be the future. So, you know, being able to give them the support they need is very important and to retaining is to appreciate them and acknowledge how important their role is to the community. Thank you, Bill. I would say that just thanking somebody like Saad just says is very important. I talked with my friends here that there's something we call the Vermont discount, which is that you get three-fifths of what they make in Boston to do the same job. And we all of us have that that's but it doesn't mean that it's right.  And I've often thought, we'll get the best people if we pay the most money. And what I've come to find, and we just want an award for being one of the best places to work again, it isn't the money. People who have left on the exit interviews have never said why don't I don't get enough money. Something in their life has changed and they want to move on. But the daily appreciations that you do give people, I think, is a big part of it. It acknowledges that you're the same. You're trying to both help each other out. And I think that that's teachers maybe are born with that. I'm not a teacher. But I think they really have this sense of giving to others. And I think we have to somehow nurture that. And I think the kids should appreciate that. I think the children should also acknowledge that that special person up there who is helping you, you should sit on a school board at some point in your life to acknowledge that. So thank you, Claire. Yeah, absolutely. To be in the business or in the profession, it's a calling to not only raise human beings, but influence human beings in the next generation. I've had nothing but an amazing gratitude for our teachers and faculty and staff that support the Burlington School District and the students that they teach. Everything that you all three said is culminated into my appreciation, respect, trust. I I hope that our our our school board represents that stability and that humane decency of working really well, working together to solve issues. It is not a combative. I experienced, you know, we've we've all experienced different scenarios, but this is not a poker game. We are not trying to manage something without their support. It is absolutely the circle of the superintendent's leadership, the governing board and the faculty and staff that create a successful district. And as you had mentioned, as a largest economic engine in the city of Burlington, we've got to be doing but got to be working on all cylinders with that human aspect at the forefront and respect and appreciation. Thank you. That is all the time we have for this evening. So I want to thank each of you for being here this evening and for stepping up to run and to serve. And thank you for tuning in to town meeting televisions ongoing coverage of local candidates, local budgets and valid items. You can find this and many more forums on cctv.org slash 2024 and on our town meeting television YouTube channel. And you can tune into our live election results after you cast your ballot on March 5th. Contact your local clerk to find out how to obtain a ballot and to register to vote. In Vermont, you can register to vote on election day. Thank you very much for watching and for sharing town meeting TV.


Hi. This is really just what we needed, eh? Just what we needed. And I'm hoping when people leave with your purchased books or ordered books, you think about what is the one thing you get to do to contribute to our salvation, whether it's making a donation to the Democratic Party, dare I say that? Or whatever, Planned Parenthood or volunteering. But there can be, there's one thing you can do. Because since Election Day or what I've come to call the zombie apocalypse, the thing that is really, I think dangerous, it is the zombie apocalypse, is the fear that we can't do anything. And we just have to overcome that. So, this poem of Pat's seems especially appropriate for the moment. Boots are being polished. Trumpeters clean their horns. Chains and locks forged. The crusade has begun. Once again, flags of Christ are unfurled in the dawn and cries of soul saviors sing apocalyptic on airwaves. Citizens, good citizens all parade into voting booths and in self-righteous sanctity X away our right to life. I do not believe as some that the vote is an end. I fear even more, it is just the beginning. So I must make an assessment, look to you and ask, where will you be when they come? They will not come a mob rolling through the streets but quickly and quietly move into our homes and remove the evil, the queerness, the phagotry, the perverseness from their midst. They will not come clothed in brown and swastikas or bearing chests heavy with gleaming crosses. The time and need for ruses is over. They will come in business suits to buy your homes and bring bodies to fill your jobs. They will come in robes to rehabilitate and white coats to subjugate. And where will you be when they come? Where will we all be when they come and they will come? They will come because we are defined as opposite, perverse, and we are perverse. Every time we watched a queer hassle in the streets and said nothing, it was an act of perversion. Every time we lied about the boyfriend or girlfriend at coffee break, it was an act of perversion. Every time we heard, I don't mind gays, but why must they be so blatant and said nothing? It was an act of perversion.  Every time we let straights make out in bars while we couldn't touch because of laws, it was an act of perversion. Every time we put on the proper clothes to go to a family wedding and left our lovers at home, it was an act of perversion. Every time we heard who I go to bed with is my personal choice. It's personal, not political. And said nothing, it was an act of perversion. Every time we let our straight relatives bury our dead and push our lovers away, it was an act of perversion. And they will come. They will come for the perverts.  It won't matter if you own your business, you have a good job, or an SSI. It won't matter if you're black, Chicano, Native American Asian, or white. It won't matter if you're from New York or Los Angeles, Galveston or Sioux Falls.   They will come. They will come to the cities and to the land, to your front rooms and your closets. They will come for the perverts. And where will you be when they come? Thank you, Pat.


This paper examined the core dimensions of primary care and assessed the evidence for their interrelationships and relevance to outcomes at the health system level. It found that primary care is a complex multidimensional system with three main components, governance, economic conditions, and workforce development. Primary care also has for dimensions, access, continuity of care, coordination of care, and comprehensiveness of care. These dimensions contribute to overall health system performance and health. This article was authored by Van Der Zijouk, Hutchinson Allen, Borma Winky G.W., and others.


All right, okay, it's working. Yeah. Yeah, do bluffs here. Come here. It's fine. Okay. Nice. Good. Hello, everyone. Are you ready for something special today? I'm happy to present this to you. So my name is Eric. This is Livio. First of all, we would like to keep you a bit quiet because this is a live demo. It will be difficult if there is too much noise. We hope the best. So, hi, Livio. How are you? Hi, Eric. How are you doing? Fine, fine. I heard you did a wonderful, nice little project lately and I'm eager to know what it's all about. Yeah, exactly. I built a new application which is built in Node.js. It's called Technology Radar and it's super cool but it only works on my machine and I want to show it to my colleagues. So, you probably need to publish it, right? Yes, yes. So, how do you do it again? Yeah, you remember last time it was really, really cumbersome to you. Did you order a VM? No, I didn't order a VM. You started by ticketing last time? No, I forgot. Let's do it now. Anyway, come on. Let's order a ticket. It will be difficult. I mean, last time it was cumbersome, right? So, first of all, you need to order a VM, yeah. Ticketing system. Exactly, yeah. Getting out some Excel. It will be at least two days if everything goes right, yeah? Well, I mean, two days is not so bad. It's okay. Then I can publish it, right? Not so sure, not so sure. Did you think about you just get an IP here? Yeah. What's the next step? Oh, right. I just get an IP, but I don't want to connect with an IP. That's hard to remember. So, I need DNS, right? Another ticket. Here we go. Seven more days, sorry. So, it won't be for the OpenSachs Summit this year. It won't be it. I think we have to wait a bit longer. How long do you stay? I mean, we have nine days. Is that okay? Maybe not. Okay. Are you sure you're through now? But yeah, now we're done, right? Okay. We have one IP. We resorted over DNS. What's next? Oh, the SL. Yeah, sure. I want to have it secure, so I need an SL. I don't want to look into your system and being kind of spreading out my password and clear text, even if it's internal in the company. I mean, this is, no, no, you don't want to do this. You want to have SL at least. Yeah. So, here we go. Eleven days. Eleven days. Are you okay with this? No, I think this is usual. I mean, we come from a big IT company or let's say a corporation where IT is pretty big and I think it's usual to have this kind of process in place. So, is there any easier solution for this and faster solution? I struggled. All these silos are sequential. I mean, you need the IP address to get a DNS. If you have the DNS, you get the SSL certificate. This is how the process is. And if you don't believe me, okay, Google for IT silo. Can you try OpenStackMate? Yeah. OpenStackMate. Let's try it. Okay, Google, connect me to OpenStackMate. Okay, let's get the test version of OpenStackMate. I am the Roche AI beep beep. Ask me anything, beep beep. Can you create me a new virtual machine? What image should the virtual machine have? Technology radar. Which version should I use? 1.0. How do you want to call it? TR. How large should the virtual machine be? Medium. Do you want to resolve TR over DNS? Yes. Successfully created the virtual machine. You can access your VM through tr.service.rms.devops.roche.com in approximately two to five minutes. You can now go rave in Berlin and drink Berliner Luft for two weeks and you're still faster than the IT. Yes. This is nice. This sounds awesome. So what did we do? Basically, we did a process of 11 days in just one minute using the Google Home. So that's quite awesome, right? And maybe some people of you are quite interested in what's happening in the background. So I will explain it for you for short. So basically, we have the OpenStack. Note here that's in our internal network. So we don't want to expose our OpenStack in the Internet. The problem is the Dialog Flap API, which is communicating with our Google Home, that's in the Internet. So Dialog Flop has support with webhooks. Basically, we could set up a webhook, but this doesn't go through, right? Because we are in the Internet and it doesn't connect. So what we need to do, we need to send a webhook to a server which communicates with our OpenStack API and sends the correct parameters and stuff like that. But still, we're in the Internet. So how did we solve this? Basically, what we've used is Adafruit. Adafruit provided us an MQTT server, which is basically a Pub and Sub, sorry, a Public and Subscribe. And it's based on TCP, so that's why we were able to communicate with our Internet network. And I also used this Dialog Forwarder, which basically just forwards every message to this MQTT server. Then it goes to this other server, which is communicating with the OpenStack API. You could also probably use, instead of the Dialog Flow Forwarder, the Google Cloud Functions. Wait a moment. Maybe there are some scepticals in the room. Oh yeah. We didn't show the product. We didn't show. We didn't show. So let's see if we are still logged in. So we are connecting through VPN to our company. Here it's a bit slow to load because first instance we have is in Santa Clara in California. We will see that we have no one instance. It got created over the whole process. It's called TR. It has a floating IP and hopefully we can resolve this over. Unfortunately, I'm not secured. It's a self-signed certificate for today. We ordered one because security still doesn't believe that we can just request certificates as a third service. So this is the next step. But basically, this is a softworks technology radar customized by Livio, which is deployed in, let's say, two minutes. Yeah. Approximately two minutes. Good. Back to the presentation. Exactly. This is your part. Good. So exactly what we did here, it's not so technical because we have some resistance in our company, for example, and a big IT company, you have several clouds or private clouds instances. And OpenSec would be the third one. So we wanted to prove that using the proper tools integrated with the proper REST API, we can do magic. For our senior leadership yesterday, we did the same presentation and they really liked it. For them it was kind of a magic. Automating a process taking 11 days in several minutes, this was like, wow, how much money will this save us? Important here, of course, as a developer or let's say a team, you don't want to interact with a Google Home. You rather would like to use a nice API in your scripts using Terraform or Ansible or what your flavor of choice is. So I would just say that in general, we are eager to know and use the OpenSec to provide self-service to our R&D. Some special thanks. Without this, this presentation wouldn't have been possible. The first one is Kensigli Heitor who did a similar presentation staging up a Kubernetes cluster in Google. So he said and he stated, I think it's so easy that you can ask for it. And this is exactly, it's so easy to create a VM that you can ask for it. So this was a message. Other than that, Martin who provided the digital ocean droplets so we could set it up and Rasmus who did a nice picture. And before we wrap up, I would like to make a reminder. Okay, Google, remind me. What's the reminder? The reminder is to... Okay, is, when do you want to be reminded? Stop. Okay, Google, stop. Okay, no problem. Nothing's been said. Okay, Google, set up a reminder. What's the reminder? Send this video to all IT managers who think that offshoring costs less than automation. Sure, send this video to all it manager who thinks that soaring costs less than automation. When do you want to be reminded? Next week. Sorry, I can only set reminders for a specific point in time. When do you want to be reminded? Next week Monday. Okay, what time? 10 a.m. Sure, I'll remind you on Monday at 10 a.m. Great, thanks. So, not yet. One last thing. Okay, Google, connect me to OpenStackMate. Sure, here's the test version of OpenStackMate. I am the Roche AI beep beep. Ask me anything, beep beep. Remove all running instances. Are you sure you want to delete all instances? Yes. This is what I call digital transformation. So, it's gone. That's it. Thank you. Okay, abort mission. Good. Thank you very much for your attention. Hope you enjoyed it. Bye.


Hey guys, Brian here from freestyleoneducation.com. Today I am going to be showing you a cool color technique and Matt's going to be following it up with a really great haircut. So we discussed a little bit what this final look was going to be and sort of came together to create it. I was trying to figure out exactly what to call this. I was just discussing with Matt, it's kind of a block color technique whereas there will be a specific pattern and specific line work but it's also more of a color melt technique because the color will be changing throughout the lengths of the hair not just in a specific pattern. So maybe we'll just call it both. As you can see here, like I said, we were planning on Matt's haircut so I know he's going to be doing a really cool sort of shattered, disconnected bob kind of a look. So the look that we're going to create is going to be almost sort of an ombre effect where we're going to have darkest at the root out to a lighter color towards the ends. Knowing where he's planning on having that disconnection, I had, I sectioned off the top and around the parietal and I've clipped that away for everything underneath. The back sections, I've got just the straight purple ink works from Paul Mitchell from the roots to the ends because I know this is going to incorporate where his disconnection is and everything that I'm going to have veiled over this, I do want it to lessen in intensity as it gets around to the back. So as you can see in the front section, I've already begun the color mouth that we're going to have through the top of the hair. I've got the purple from the roots to the ends faded into the pink through the mid chefs. I'll show you how I do this, the colors that I use, and then how to just kind of keep this neat and still move in a nice efficient pace. So we've got that done. I wanted you to see it before I sectioned it all away because I want to be able to just lay this color down as I work. So I'm just going to place some foil right over this because I will be doing a slightly different color technique and pattern through the top. So I want to leave this undisturbed by just placing it under some foil that will just adhere right to that color. Now when I let the tops of the hair down, the three colors that I've chosen that are going to be that color melt, I'm working with, like I said, I'm working with Paul Mitchell ink works today. I'm going to be working with the blue, which is going to be the darker root, faded into the purple, which is then going to fade into the pink. The three colors go really nicely together if you want to change that up. I do suggest just finding things that are similar close in the color wheel if you want to create a nice gradation of color that sort of just blends itself out. If you want to have more fun and get things that don't go together that well, that could look really awesome too. Alright, so I've got her natural part. And to make this time efficient but also effective, the way I'm going to go through this, at first I'm going to create my blue root almost the same way that you would do a single process retouch that was sitting in your chair. So I've got my blue ink works here. And I'm just going to come through and start applying the root color. Now that we've got the blue roots done, we've got the first color down, we want to start to now create that middle color. For us and for this scenario, it's going to be our purple ink works. So what I'm going to do with each of my sections, I'm going to come in here. I'll start at the bottom and work up because it's just how it's going to be cleanest and easiest. I'm going to take my purple, decide where it's going to live as far as how far down, because don't forget we have a third color that we need to put in here. So I'm going to have the purple run from about here, say down to here. So we're going to start applying the purple, not quite going over that blue yet, but making sure that you get good, even saturation through the mid shafts. Because if you're working with fantasy colors, chances are you're really only going to get one go at this the first time around. So getting it nice and close, making sure you have that good saturation there. And always have a towel on hand when you're working with these, because you are going to need to make sure that you work very cleanly. If I'm dealing with colors that I want that nice gradation, I'm going to need to make sure that my hands are clean in between each section. So then before moving on, I'm going to take my ends and my third color, which is going to be the pink, and apply that almost right up to the purple. Again, making sure you get a nice, good, even saturation with plenty of color on there. Now comes the fun part. I always keep two extra brushes on hand, because like I said, you want to work cleanly, you want to work neatly. So my first brush is going to be what I'm going to use to marry these two colors together. So I'm going to take a little bit of blue on one corner of the brush, a little bit of purple on the other corner of the brush, and then I'm just going to start to marry those together. You just blend it, making sure you spread the hair out, get nice, even saturation. So taking that and now blending your colors together, bring that blue down into the purple, and then bring that purple up into the blue. And then eventually you'll see it where it no longer ceases to be two colors, it just turns into one. Now we'll take our second brush and do the same thing down here. Pink on one corner of the brush, purple on the other, and then just marry that in. And then eventually you've got your great blue into purple into pink. So now watch me do it at a way fast forwarded speed. Fantasy color, ombre, color melt, block color, fun technique. We're going to let her sit and chill now, let that color sink in, and then we'll be right back with a really awesome haircut for Matt for this. A couple pointers I want to make sure that you just notice. Something, when you're coming in and doing this, because like I said, I know the haircut we're trying to go into, and I know that if you followed some of our other videos, you know that when I say, I do ombres, I want the color to sort of melt and blend all over the place. But with this, I wanted to keep a little bit of consistency and try to have it turn into the blue at around the same area all the way around the head, just because the way that's going to sit after his haircut is complete, it's just going to kind of flow really, really neat. So I look forward to seeing it and I'll catch you on the next video. Thanks. Alright guys, so now we're going to get into the haircut and I'm really excited to bring you this type of haircut because the long bob is very popular, but I think it's really difficult to cut a long bob and have it actually fall the way that you want. So what we're going to do is we're going to start off by sectioning this to create an undercut on the bottom of the haircut. So we're going to section off basically from the occipital bone down. So you're going to kind of see me do that now. I'm really riding that occipital bone. I want to make sure that the weight is basically falling over top of the occipital bone. That's going to give the whole entire haircut kind of a tuck under as it comes around the occipital bone. So I like to remove all of that weight. The best way to do this is just section it off, pre-section everything, get organized, and really look at how that top hair is going to fall over before you go in and start cutting because you want to make sure that you have the right amount of density left over in the haircut. So we're going to go in, we're going to use a razor in this haircut. We're using a straight razor. The thing I like about that is it's just a really precise tool, but it has a lot of freedom to it as well. So I like cutting with a scissor. Most of the time we'll see me cutting with a scissor, but sometimes when I want to just remove a lot of bulk and feather the edges, then I go in with the straight blade. Everything in this haircut is coming directly out from the head. So we're cutting it square. There's not really a graduation. What you'll notice is I'm pretty much at 90 degrees. I mean, there's a slight bevel, maybe a little graduation towards the top, but for the most part it's at a 90-degree angle. And some of you that haven't watched my videos in the past, you may look at this and say it's a 45-degree angle, but really if you look at the head shape and how it curves under, we're really cutting at a 90-degree. So just doing some layering. Now we're going to work on top of our fingers. The biggest difference here, and we've talked about this in cutting bobs or graduation or anything, when you're working in the back of the head, it's better to shift your hand position from side to side. So when I'm cutting on the left-hand side, I like to have my fingers pointed up so that my combing is consistent. We talked about that in the past as well. You can reference some of the older graduation videos from FriislawnEducation.com. But just pointing my fingers down, keeping the fact that I'm combing towards the center of the head that will keep me consistent on both sides. I actually just saw a haircut the other day. I watched somebody do a haircut, and I noticed that on one side, they combed both sides the same direction. So on one side they were combing to the left, and on the other side they were still combing to the left. And what happened was, in the end of the haircut, one side was longer than the other. The reason that happens is because they don't change their hand position. You've got to really change it up to stay consistent. All right, now we let down our first section to go over top of the undercut. You'll see that I'm cutting this at a zero-degree angle. I'm still using the feather razor, so basically I'll use about medium strokes on this. So I'm cutting it at a one length, but just doing a little heavier stroke so that it shatters the edges. The beauty of this haircut, the thing that I like the most about it, is we've already collapsed the bottom, so now with this hair falling over it, all that weight is taken out, but it's still going to look like a shattered one-length bob, or a long bob. So it just takes out all that density that you don't even need, and most people just keep it in there because they feel like they have to, but if you take out that bottom section, that whole occipital bone area, then that hair falls over really, really nice. So again, nice heavy medium stroke there. That's going to give me a really nice shattered line within the haircut. Everything's being over-directed back towards my body, so we're cutting a triangular shape. We're pushing that weight forward slightly. So we're going to do the same thing on the opposite side, so medium stroke with the razor, directing everything towards myself, but not over-directing it to the center back, just straight back. So creating a slight triangular feel, just pushing that weight forward towards the chin. Then you're really going to see, you can see how soft it falls. That's the beauty of this haircut, and we talked about it a little bit ago, but just removing that weight and allowing the top of the haircut to fall over, instead of trying to remove weight by layering too much. So let's get into the side. So basically what I'm doing here is a heavier stroke with the razor. I want to really shatter the sides, but I'm drawing my own line. So instead of really over-directing it too much back to create the forward movement of the line, I'm etching it in with the razor. So I'm just a heavy stroke, dropping my finger, dropping my elevation a little bit slightly as I get to the front, just to create my own line and whatever I want it to be. I love this haircut. A lot of celebrities are wearing this type of haircut with a lot of movement, a lot of the kind of shattered feel to it. They're calling it the lob, the long bob, and I just really love the way that it falls and looks. Especially if it's just bouncing right over the shoulder, it's a really flattering haircut for a lot of people. For the fringe part, we're going to cut a small side fringe in this haircut with the razor. So it'll be interesting, hopefully. We'll see. But just diagonal forward sectioning, pretty typical from what you'd seen me in the past do on haircutting videos, but just kind of creating that diagonal forward sectioning and then taking a small vertical section out of it. So right at the part line, I'm going to go in with a heavy stroke with the razor, really shatter that fringe, but just creating a softness right around the cheekbone, and that's what we're trying to do here. Then I can connect the rest of that section, that little triangle that we've taken out of the fringe, connect it to that point. Not really over-directing it to create the angle. I'm creating the angle with the razor, just etching in whatever line I feel like I want to create. So you can have a lot of freedom with this and that's another benefit of a razor. Now we're going to go in, as soon as I get that, we're going to go in and connect the other side. So real simple, nothing fancy here. Just connecting the two sides together. So now we've finished it. That was the fastest blow-dry ever. I didn't think the blow-dry was that important. We flat-wrapped it, we ironed it. Now I'm going through and I'm just point-cutting around the edges, just really working that line in because I want it to fall shattered. I want the layers to feel shattered, but I like when there's a little bit of a line to the perimeter. Now I'm going to go through, a little bit more, we're going to do a dry-cutting technique. So I like to mix up, not only just using a razor, but going in with a scissor as well. So we're doing a slight bit of tease cutting, half-closing the scissor and just working it in to create the softness on the edges. You see that color that Brian created? I love, he just mixed all those inkworks together. It really makes the haircut stand out a lot. It's really fashionable and a lot of people love to have that type of coloring. You can see the shattering on the fringe that we created with the razor. So it's nice and soft. A lot of people want PC bangs or fringe and that's what they're asking for in the salon. So it's an easy way to create that. Now I want to go through and show you how to kind of create a straighter line if you want to, just add a little more artistic edge to it. I want to remove some of that purple. I really want that green and blue to kind of pop in the fringe area. So I wanted to remove some of that as well. It's kind of how you tie in a haircut with a color. I like that the pink and the purple go to the ends, but I really wanted to create a strong fringe. When it got to the end of the haircut, I just wanted to do that.  Don't try to cut it all at once. No matter how sharp your scissor is, you want to push that hair a little bit. And then, yeah, then you can see I really liked how that veil kind of fell over. So this was something, the beauty of dry cutting is that maybe you don't always go in with a plan. And when I looked at it, I really loved how that was peeking through, how the purple was kind of going through there. So I just went in and just etched out a little bit, but I wanted to leave some so that it was almost like you saw the depth in the bang and then the brightness kind of fell over. And I just liked the way that that looked. So I sectioned away some of that veil that was falling over. And then I wanted to go through and just kind of make that fringe a little bit stronger. So again, going through just lifting up with my scissor, putting in a stronger stamp on the fringe, and then I'm going to let the top kind of fall. So a little point cutting in there. I love these little details. I think this is what separates salons. So a lot of salons wouldn't take the time to do the detail work. I think it's really important you create the shape wet and then go in and really add these finishing touches. We're going to do a little slide cutting. So just pinching the hair. This will add a little more shattering to the haircut. So just going through, sliding my scissor down. I'm using the Mizetani Type Z2. It's my favorite scissor. It's really sharp. It just peels right through the hair. I love it. So you can see the movement, how it's not dense at the bottom. That's really the key of this haircut is just taking out the density, letting the hair kind of flow and fall without cutting a bunch of short layers into it. You can see how the back right there, it's beveling under and the reason it's doing that is because the entire occipital bone is gone. So there's no hair to push that shape out. It's just collapsing down and tucking under. That's a challenge we've had for a long time in hair cutting is you always have that bulk at the bottom because it's so dense. Well, if you do an undercut, you don't have that problem anymore.  And again, you could take that veil off. Obviously some parts of this are salon-friendly, some parts aren't. You can take what you want from it. But that veil could obviously be cut into more of a side fringe if you want it. But you can see how it peeks through there. And then the last little bit, I wanted to just put a little shape into this so it wasn't just a big long piece hanging down. So we're just going to tie it into the bottom there. Again, I cut the line, slight elevation, so then I go in with my point cutting and that just defines the line even more. Because anytime you pick up hair, it doesn't create a real strong line. So just going in there using the point of the scissor, sharpens it up. So here's our finished look. I hope you guys enjoy it. I like it. It's cool. Brian did a great job on the color. Thank you guys so much for following us, supporting us at freesaloneducation.com. Make sure you join our community and we will have lots and lots more videos to come for you guys and free, of course. So check us out, freesaloneducation.com. Thanks guys.


Hey what's up folks! In this video we're making a USB foot switch with CircuitPython. We were inspired to make a new foot switch which could be really nice for young folks and even animals. For tasks that require both hands, we think using your feet can really help you do tasks much quicker. We designed and 3D printed a 3-button foot pedal that snap fits together. This project can be powered by either an Adafruit QT Pi RP2040 or the Keebee 2040. CircuitPython makes USB H&D projects really easy to put together. You can customize the key codes and set up different keyboard shortcuts or media controls like play, pods, and volume. The demo code is easily customizable for beginners and there's lots of example projects to get you started. With CircuitPython you can quickly iterate your code and easily make changes on any computer with USB and a text editor. You can get the parts to build this project, links are in the description. The build features a swappable PCB mount so you can choose which microcontroller you want to use for your setup. The board snap fits into the PCB mount and stays secured without any hardware or adhesives. Be sure to check out the guide on the Adafruit learning system for a full tutorial on building this project. A micro switch is secured to a bracket using two long screws and gets panel mounted to the main base of the foot switch enclosure. We use quick connect cable so it's easy to plug into the terminals on the micro switches. The wires are soldered to the pins on the microcontroller. The board is inserted into the PCB mount at an angle with the corners fitting under these clips. The mount is then secured to the main base using hardware screws with all of the connections made. You can add additional 3.5mm TRS jacks for compatible AT switches like the ones from AT makers. The top covers can then be installed to the built-in hinges on the base. There are nubbins on the sides of the covers that are press-fitted into the dimples on the hinges. The micro switch features a bump actuator so it works really nicely without the need of any additional springs. We think having the ability to add AT switches is a really nice feature and folks can customize it designed to add more. Additional rubber feet will make it grip to any hard surface and they just stick to the bottom of the case. We hope this inspires you to try out CircuitPython for your next USB controller project. Thanks a bunch for watching and be sure to subscribe for more projects from Adafruit.