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School district sees ‘unnerving’ exodus APRIL 14, 2022
Board stands behind superintendent BY JASON STARR Observer staff
Ten Champlain Valley School District administrators plan to leave their jobs at the end of this school year, a rate of leadership turnover that is alarming some members of the school community. “This is unprecedented, and it serves as a red flag that something is wrong,” Jodi Sanders, a music teacher at Shelburne Community School and parent of a student in the district, said at the April 5 meeting of the Champlain Valley School Board. The departures include: Chief Operating Officer Jeanne Jensen, Director of Learning and Innovation Jeff Evans, Director of Student Support Services Megan Roy, Director of Network Services Mike Kanfer, Director of Early Education Shelley Henson, High School Activities and Athletic Director Dan Shepardson, Hinesburg Co-Principal John Pontius, Shelburne Lead Principal Scott Sivo, Shelburne Special Education Administrator Peggy Sue Van Nostrand and Charlotte Special Education Director Cassandra Townsend. “As both a staff member and a parent, this amount of change is both unnerving and concerning,” Sanders said, calling the departures “a mass exodus of
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highly skilled, well-liked, exceptional leadership.” All of the departures have come since the hiring of Superintendent Rene Sanchez, who is about nine months into his tenure after replacing 15-year Superintendent Elaine Pinckney. Sanders said departing administrators are “expressing that they do not feel supported by the systems of leadership and governance.” Similarly, an anonymous email sent to the Observer and to the school board pointed to Sanchez as the root cause of the administrator departures. School board chair Angela Arsenault told the Observer that the board has completed a performance review of Sanchez — including soliciting anonymous feedback about Sanchez from school staff — and that Sanchez “has the board’s full support.” “The administrative departures we’re seeing are due to a few different factors — including expected turnover with a change in leadership, personal decisions regarding career advancement, and obvious trends in our state and country in the education field — which are unrelated to Superintendent Sanchez’s performance,” said Arsenault. In her April 5 comments to the board, Sanders said she “respectfully disagrees” with framing the departures as an expected result of a change in leadership.
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Director of Network Services Mike Kanfer, left, and Chief Operating Officer Jeanne Jensen are among 10 CVSD leaders who are leaving the district at the end of this school year. OBSERVER FILE PHOTOS
“As a 20-plus-year experienced teacher, I have experience in multiple districts … and I’ve never seen this kind of leadership change in a single year,” Sanders said. No board members responded to Sanders’ comments during the meeting. Arsenault acknowledged in an email to the Observer that the board could have set up a
smoother “onboarding” process during the transition from Pinckney to Sanchez. “There are things we would do differently if given the choice and a time machine,” she said. “Since that’s not possible, we’re looking forward and focusing our collective energy on supporting our superintendent, administrators, teachers and students as we move through this
transitional phase into the opportunity that change and progress provide.” The district has already hired a successor for one of the pending vacancies. On Tuesday it announced that the director of special services at CVU, Anna Couperthwait, will be promoted to the district’s director of student support services, replacing see DISTRICT page 24
Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has recruited an engineering firm to oversee an assistance program for schools via a request for proposal process. The DEC had about $2 million in grants for stormwater drainage improvements, and last March, awarded the funds to Chicago-based GreenPrint Partners to distribute to schools where the permit applies. GreenPrint specializes in developing green infrastructure and administers programs that encourage towns to approve more environmentally friendly developments. “Our main focus is putting more green infrastructure in the ground,” said Laura Kenney of
GreenPrint Partners. GreenPrint Partners does the administrative work for the DEC-endorsed Vermont Green Schools Initiative. “We match schools that have enrolled for assistance through the Vermont Green Schools Initiative with local Vermont vendors, contractors and design firms — people that are able to help the schools meet the new permit requirements,” Kenney said. CVSD schools would probably not be as far along in the design and permitting process without assistance through the Green Schools Initiative, said CVSD Chief Operations Officer Jeanne Jensen.
“We appreciate the funding and expertise,” she said. All schools that applied for assistance are still in phase one of the initiative — the design, planning and permitting phase. Phase two of the initiative is when the construction of new stormwater infrastructure begins. Once construction plans are approved, schools will have five years to install new drainage systems or retrofit existing ones. Jensen said construction on CVSD school properties would begin as soon as plans are approved and funding is in place. State regulators initially estimated that 47 schools would sign up with GreenPrint Partners for
Schools work toward Clean Water Act compliance
Grants, technical assistance provided for stormwater improvements BY KARSON PETTY Community News Service
All six schools in the Champlain Valley School District will soon need to meet new standards for stormwater drainage. CVSD schools are among the 70 Vermont schools and colleges that need to improve their stormwater management infrastructure under the Vermont Clean Water Act of 2015. The schools will need a “3acre general permit,” which applies to all properties that have 3
or more acres of paved or roofed surfaces, making it difficult for rain and snowmelt to soak into the soil. The new stormwater rules also serve to update the permits that were issued under standards prior to 2002 and give permits to properties that do not currently have stormwater permits. Most public schools in the Lake Champlain basin are prime candidates for the permit because of their expansive parking lots, sidewalks and large buildings. State regulators anticipated that schools might need help applying for a new stormwater permit and designing stormwater treatment systems according to the new standards. The
see CLEAN WATER page 24