Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Good afternoon. It's the House Appropriations Committee, Thursday, 03/19/2026. We are back again, and we're going to talk about the Miscellaneous Education Bill, H931. We have Betsy Hing from Legislative Council here, and I think Ezra from Joint Office. So I don't even really know what this is about. So educate us, please.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you. Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Council. And I do apologize. I have to duck right out at four

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So we'll listen, and then

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: we'll ask questions near the end. Okay, but my internet is telling me people are telling me that I'm unstable, or the internet is unstable. So I'm just trying to log on to Zoom. Bear with me. If you all have access to it, it may be faster if I don't share my screen and I just walk you through it.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yeah, we have it. Okay. We have Introduced by House End and Committee on Ways and Means report. Is there a fiscal note that we should also have? Is there an actual fiscal note? Oh, it's Okay. The number? 931. Okay. Yes, Beth, why don't you start?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Although now I'm in, so Okay, so nine thirty one as introduced. I think the reader assistance headings are your most helpful orientation in this bill. The first reader assistance heading on page two, line three for section one, Approved independent school moratoriums. In the budget in 2023, you all created a moratorium on the approval of initial applications for approved independent schools. Sometimes you hear folks say no new independent schools, but the language actually says approval of an initial application. That's why we're here. Subsection B you added last year related to whether an initial application is required for tax status conversion from nonprofit to for profit. And subsection C on line 16 on page two is what the bill adds, and that is an exception to the moratorium for therapeutic approved independent schools that are undergoing a change of ownership. And because of that change of ownership, the state board is requiring an initial application, But the therapeutic approved independent school is going to maintain itself as a therapeutic approved independent school. And so subsection C is an exception to the moratorium saying, if you are in a therapeutic approved independent school, you're going through a change of ownership, you intend to remain a therapeutic approved independent school after the change of ownership, then the moratorium doesn't apply to you, and the state board and the secretary are required to process your initial application according to the law, which means they have to jump through all the hoops they'd have to jump through. It's not an automatic that their application would be approved. It just means it gets you in the door. Right now, the moratorium prevents you from getting in the door. This lets you in the door for the application to be processed.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: The therapeutic.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes, we have that in state law. I can actually share my screen any moment. Okay. Approved therapeutic approved independent schools defined in 16 VSA eight twenty eight subsection D. An approved independent school that limits enrollment for publicly funded students resigning in Vermont to students who are on an IEP or a five zero four plan or who are enrolled pursuant to a written agreement between a local education agency and the school or pursuant to a court order.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Can we have those? Yes.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Do have a lot of them? Don't know, if I would care. I don't know. So this exception in the moratorium just gets you in the door to have an initial application process. It doesn't guarantee that it would be approved. And it does require that the therapeutic approved independent school needs to maintain itself as a therapeutic approved independent school.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: So just to be clear,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: this remains moratorium in creating new ones.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Correct.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: But that if there is a an existing one that is being sold, because that's how that works. It's not it doesn't belong to a town or anything or community. So it's in owned by a corporate an educational corporation. And when that corporation wants to sell, buyer has to be able to purchase it and then promise that it's going to remain a therapeutic school. But it still has to apply for its own permit or application to be that school.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This language does nothing to affect the private transaction. I just want to be clear. This doesn't affect the private transaction at all. It's just the

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: The

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the board rules for approval of applications don't have anything specifically in them that says, if you change ownership, or if you're a new LLC, that triggers a new initial application. But I believe the rules have been interpreted that way. And so if you're changing ownership and you're a therapeutic approved independent school and the board says you need to submit an initial application, and after you change your ownership, you intend to stay a therapeutic approved independent school, then the board has to process your application. Okay. Section two, we're going to skip through this real quickly. This is Vermont. Section two is the interstate compact for education. This is Vermont joining the interstate compact for education. Vermont was a member until the early 90s. We withdrew from the compact. We have not been a member since its early to mid-90s. But you have been paying dues to the compact on and off throughout the years. And you have been appointing commission members to the compact on and off throughout the years. So this is codifying you rejoining the Compact. Things

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: you didn't know. Quick question, Wayne.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Any knowledge of why they closed Compact in the first place?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know. I don't know. There is a few

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office)]: of us

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: who was here then. Alice. Alice. Alice.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It could be, Ezra will go over that in his fiscal note or dues, if you will. You've been paying them on and off anyway. And I think Vermont was maybe one of two states that was not a member or is not a member currently. Essentially joining the compact gives you privilege to sit at the table for all of the decisions compact makes. And primarily, this is a research vessel for you all, where you can get information. Already are having these folks testify in your committees right now. So this would give you a seat at the table to to participate in the compact activities in an official capacity. So then we're going to skip all the way.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: A lot of pages for that. Yes.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're going skip all the way to section three, which is on page 15, line nine. The section's on line 10. The reader assistance heading is on line nine, cooperative educational service areas. You all created boards of cooperative education service areas just a few years ago, I believe in 2024. All Section three does and several sections after it is change the name of Board of Cooperative Education Services to Cooperative Educational Service Areas. There are no substantive changes. It is just a name change. And Yes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Was thinking you would get into that.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Ways and means, in their committee amendment, has removed all of these sections because these sections are going to now travel in a different bill that House Education is working on.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So if you see the House Ways and Means bill, it says delete, delete, delete in sections three to 12. So I don't think we need to go over three to 12 because goodness knows what they're gonna look like when they're in the education bill. Perfect.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: The

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: miscellaneous education bill, not the education bill with a capitol.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: We're going to jump to page 33, line twelve and thirteen, section 13. Your reader assistance heading here is class size minimums. You all in Act 73 last year established class size minimums. You did that by amending your education quality standards statute. Failure to comply with education quality standards includes failure to comply with class size minimums, and there are consequences for that. You've also asked the State Board of Education in Act 73 to update the education quality standards rules that go along with the statute to reflect class size minimums. The rules have not been developed yet. Class size minimums take effect on 07/01/2026. There has been concern from the field on not having enough direction to know whether they are in compliance with class size minimums prior to the rules being adopted. And so what section 13 does is it adds a statement or adds a piece of session law on page 34, line three, that says a school's failure to comply with class size minimums does not count towards the three consecutive school years of noncompliance that triggers those consequences Until the education quality standards rules are updated or 07/01/2027, whichever comes first. So rather than delay the effective date of the statute. What this bill does is say, the statute remains good law. The rules are in process. We're not going to hold you accountable for failure to comply with class size minimums until the rules are in place or 07/01/2020

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Section

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: 14, background checks, page 34, lines eleven and twelve. This section requires the agency of education to request criminal record information for a person the secretary is prepared to recommend for any full time, part time or temporary employment or contractual relationship with the agency if such person will have or has the potential to have unsupervised contacts with the student. The rest of the section is the process for that records check-in all of the information that needs to be exchanged between the agency and the applicant. So the agency has to sign a user agreement with BCIC, the Vermont Crime Information Center. And then they make a request for any of these applicants to BCIC for a background check. The language pet that passed out of house Ed had the applicant paying a fee associated with the background check. Ways and means has changed that. Let me see if I can pull up their amendment quickly. So there you see all the BOCES language struck or deleted. This is the Ways and Means amendment. It strikes out the language that requires the it just refers to a generic fee on line two there. And then it says that fee shall be paid by the applicant. Ways and Means is proposing that instead of that generic fee being paid by the applicant, they're a little more specific and the agency is paying the fee. So the agency shall pay the fingerprinting fee that is set out in statute and shall pay any fee required by the FBI associated with a fingerprint supported criminal record check. The FBI set its fees out in the Federal Register, and there was no easy way to refer to that. We're just generally going to refer to the fee that is required by the FBI for a fingerprint supported criminal record check.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Did we not take testimony earlier this year about how difficult it's been for these to be processed? Yes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes we did. Is this the same there are places that they can aren't there more than one place that they can go to get background checks?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: I don't recall.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: This specifically asked for the Vermont Province, which is what we heard about. Which is the one that had the Department of Public Right, the delays of the which they hope to have improved by December 31.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Okay they are working on that we

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: still need to do the background checks and we know all the reasons why we need to do background checks this is

[Unidentified Committee Member]: for the agency.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Right, the agency pays the fee. So that was the check.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: It's all about the agency rather than Following

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: on a form provided by striking out a set of the applicant's fingerprints and a fee established by the crime information center. But my question, does the agency information already require it? No.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is language requested by the agency.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: They do French factors or

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: for French sub E. He forgot about schools.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. This language is slated to live in Title 16, right next to the nestled in with the sections that require background checks for teachers and background checks for superintendents. All of that, all of those background checks are done at the local level, not at the state level. So this is requiring at the state level agency of education employees or consultants who will have unsupervised contact with children.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So it's not the schools,

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: it's the agency itself. Correct. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: That makes sense.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: This is the same process. It's almost the same language verbatim for the superintendent's background check. I just modeled the language right after that. And the rest of the statute is about the information sharing that needs to go back and forth between the applicant and the agency related to the criminal record check, the maintenance of the records, the right to challenge accuracy of the record. It requires the secretary to request and obtain information from the child protection registry as well for any applicant whom a criminal record check is required. And then an applicant convicted of a sex offense that requires registration shall not be eligible for employment with the agency. Section 15 adds the agency of education to the list of folks who need to maintain those criminal records. And then the effective date for everything that we've just walked through would be 07/01/2026.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: So essentially, what we have is the interstate compact, the carve out for a moratorium for a therapeutic school changing hands, and that the agency has to pay

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: the fees for background checks. And the class size, the minimum whole parlance.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Class size, minimum whole parlance. Those four things. Yes. When we take out the way to make, when we add the way to make. Okay. Wayne?

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Just a couple. Is everyone that works in school now, is a condition of them being there in the first place, do they have a background check?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Let's look at I don't have this part of Title 16. This is right.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: It's going assume anybody in a school.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: And she would have to do it.

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: Staff would have to do it.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: then in terms of background checks, there just my thinking is there's only one system, but it may be accessed by different either sheriff's departments or different entities. Is that correct? It's not multiple record check systems.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: It is VC. That would be a question I think for VCIC. I

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: think there's only one. There's one.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: One that can

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: be accessed from different locations, but the different agencies that are all in law enforcement.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes. Yes. Local sheriffs send their stuff to the It all ends up here. And

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: you can see where this statute was lived, this access to criminal records sub chapter in title 16, where you've got a provision on educator licensure, employment of superintendents, school employees, contractors. It would be nestled right in here, two fifty four. But all of these two sections are requiring the same background check for educators and for superintendents.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Thank you. If you don't mind sitting there, we'll get Esra up to tell us about the fiscal note.

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office)]: Alright. For the record, that's your hold on. Going to fiscal office. Beth has already given you a great walk through of the bill, so I'll just go ahead and focus on the fiscal impacts for you. There are essentially two changes here that have a fiscal impact. So the first one is that, as Beth mentioned, this would codify Vermont's entry into the Interstate Compact for Education, otherwise known as the Education Commission of the States or for the States. So member states pay dues to the compact. And so Vermont is currently paying these dues through the AOE budget. As you heard, we've been paying dues on and off even though we were

[Rep. Wayne Laroche (Member)]: not a

[Ezra (Joint Fiscal Office)]: member. And I spoke with the agency of education, and they've currently budgeted for these dues in their fiscal year twenty twenty seven budget. And those dues would be about $53,000 per year. They haven't changed for the last several years. The second change would be in section 14, as Beth talked about, the requirement for certain AOE employment applicants to have background checks. So this would require the AOE to pay the fees associated with those criminal record checks. And there are essentially two pieces to that that go into the estimate here. So first of all, you would have your applicant have their fingerprints taken by a local or state law enforcement agent, and then in statute, that b is set at up to $35. And then the second portion is once you have those fingerprints of the applicant, you would use those to request their records through VCIC from the FBI. And the FBI currently charges about $12 per applicant. So putting those two together, we estimate it would be a cost of about $47 per applicant in fiscal year twenty twenty seven. The Agency of Education estimates 34 people would need this records check every year. And so the estimate is about $1,600 in fiscal year twenty twenty seven through the agency of education, which we consider

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes, they can absorb it in their budget. So we will not be adding jackets to this. We like de de minimis, one of our favorite expressions. Yes. Oh, that must have been there was a break. Are there any questions for Beth or Esra? And if there aren't any, are people comfortable voting this fill out now? People okay with that? Lynn? Okay, BOCES was created last year. 2024, I believe. Close enough. That was supposed to be something that was going to be, I'm not quite sure what it was going to be. It sounded like

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: it was going be like a buying compact. Is that correct? I mean,

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: because in New York State, the federal education programs that are funded by the federal government are in countywide single They have countywide BOCES in New York City. New York, yeah. And they're for the special education, CTE, other federally funded things. It's not just federal funds. My husband used to do a lot of work in New York state schools, he went through BOCES to get his payment as a teacher in residence, artist in residence But as that's not in this bill anymore, though. So it doesn't It's there. It's all gone. What's the difference between some of us know it's BOCES from New York State and what BOCES was in 'twenty four and what's DE? It doesn't matter because it's going be in the other education bill. It's out of this bill. It's out of this bill. If you look at the amendments or ways and means, that page, all those things are about BOCES, they're all deleted. So we will have to learn about it when the big education bill comes out. But they don't need to. Any other questions on this floor? So I want to make sure we have it right. Have a motion to approve H931 introduced and amended by House Ways and Means, right? Increased by House Ways Amended by Ways and Means. Fair motion? So moved. Second. David Yacovone, John and David Yacovone, the team down there. Okay, any further discussion? Seeing none, when the clerk is ready, please call the roll.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Representative Bloomling? Yes. Representative Dickinson? Yes. Ms. Anna Feltus?

[Rep. Martha Feltus (Vice Chair)]: Yes.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Representative Kascenska? Yes. Representative Laroche? Yes. Representative Mrowicki?

[Rep. Michael Mrowicki (Member)]: Yes. Representative Nigro? Yes. Yes. Squirrell, yes.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Representative Stevens? Yes. Representative Yacovone? Yes.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Yes. Excellent. And John, I think this is your bill, because it's education.

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Your first education bill?

[Rep. Trevor Squirrell (Clerk)]: Yeah. Okay.

[Rep. Robin Scheu (Chair)]: Beth and Ezra, thank you so much for getting you out of here on time. Just noticed. If somebody picks that clock a little bit, thank you. Can't really tell them. Okay. Bienie, please. Thank you very much. That's all the bills we have for today. So what I want to do is we'll take a break for Who still has bills? Pip and John, you do. Okay. Well, we're going to start on the updated spreadsheet, and I can fill you guys in later. But I can't wait to push a couple of things that are changing. I'll just fill you in on it later. So let's take a break for ten minutes to get ourselves organized.