Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: You're live.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Okay, we're back. Conference committee on H454. Booked after five. The Senate spent some time looking through the house proposal and have a counter proposal that's now in front of you. Much of it some of it you've seen before, just wanted to put some of the stuff all in one place to make sure we're talking about a package as we do this. And so we'll have council St. James walk us through it again. So like for instance, the first section here is not new from what you've seen before. It's just put all in one place, but anyway.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm sorry, can I borrow back? Before we jump into that, I just are are you all okay with the default tax rate? I don't wanna, like

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: We I'm fine with it.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Okay. Senator Cummings? The default tax rate in the bill? Does that feel okay to you? Yeah. Okay. Great. Just wanna, like, close-up shop on a very important yet small detail before we lose track.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: That one's been weighing on.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It has been weighing on me. It's very important, I think, to the future of Vermont's fiscal integrity. Thank you. Okay, great. Onwards. We like that.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Thank you. Fantastic. You ready? Yeah. Okay. Beth St. James Office of Legislative Counsel. Share my screen. I have run out of ideas on how to name documents at this point. So we're calling this the Senate Wednesday Counter Proposal. Hold on. What will we

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: do next Wednesday? Sorry. I'm so sorry.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: It's Sorry.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Inappropriate joke.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: It's Thursday. Oh. All this

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we're looking at this language. Language highlighted in yellow is language the senate is proposing. Some of this is new language that you've never seen before, and some of it is language the senate has proposed in the past. And there is one section where the senate is proposing to essentially incorporate language that the House has proposed. Let's dig in. Schools eligible to receive public tuition. And also, I should hope it goes without saying that these are just the sections that we are discussing. This is not the entire report, and there is lots more to H4504. Okay. So the first section we're gonna look at is Section 21, Schools eligible to receive public tuition. Section an amendment section 21 of the bill, an amendment to section eight twenty eight. The Senate is proposing to, keep their proposal of a requirement that approved independent schools have at least 25% of their Vermont resident student enrollment composed of publicly funded tuitioning students. The next section we're going look at is on page three, calculation of tuition. Section 27 of the bill, section eight twenty three of Title 16. The Senate is proposing that in subsection A, we leave it the same as it passed out of the House and as it passed out of the Senate, and that is essentially that tuition follows money follows the student. The base and weights follow the student. And then on page four, we have a new subsection B. In addition to the tuition amount calculated in subsection A, a receiving school may charge, and a sending school district shall be required to pay, an additional fee in the amount of the product of the base amount and up to 5% of each student attending the receiving school in grades nine through 12 only if the electorate of ascending school district with at least one student attending the receiving school, has voted to approve the additional district spending required by the fee charged pursuant to the subsection. For the purposes of this subsection, a receiving school shall not include an approved independent school in Vermont functioning as an approved area career and technical center. On page five, there's a new subsection C. Notwithstanding subsections A and B of this section or any other provision of law to the contrary, The district shall pay the full tuition charged to students attending an approved independent school in Vermont functioning as an approved area career and technical center. This last clause here, the district shall pay, that's current law.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: The

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: notwithstanding part obviously doesn't exist anywhere right now, but the last part of the clause in is all current law. Section 28, the conforming repeals, remains the same. Section 45A, this is where the Senate is proposing to adopt the House's proposed language related to the foundation formula report that JFO is going to contract for on whether it costs more to educate a secondary student than an elementary student, and if so, what's that appropriate weight, and how do we account for CTE within the Foundation Formula? And then effective dates. The Senate is proposing here If we jump to page nine Actually, stay on page eight. Subsection F of the effective dates is the big contingency for the foundation formula and everything related to the foundation formula to take effect. So, on July 1, the foundation formula would take effect if new school districts are operational. You've gotten that report, that 45A report back, and you've had an opportunity to enact legislation in consideration of the report. Starting on subdivision four, that's and everything after it, that's the foundation formula. Above that, highlighted in yellow, the Senate is proposing Section 11, the school closure language, would take effect contingently at the same time as the foundation formula. That in Section 27, which is the tuition calculation section, subsection A, which is the money follows the student, the base and weights, and subsection C, which is pulling in a piece of current law, which is that school districts would be required to pay the full tuition charged in an approved independent school functioning as an area career and technical center. And then the conforming repeals, those would all also take contingent effect along this at the same time as the foundation formula. And then subsection B of section eight twenty eight and section 27 of the bill, the 5% extra that a receiving school could charge and that the electorate has to approve would take contingent would be contingently effective, and I should this should be highlighted in green. I'm sorry. This is the House's language. That would take effect on 07/01/2028, contingent on districts being operational. The Section 45A report containing evidence that it costs more to educate grades nine through 12, General Assembly has failed or but the General Assembly has failed to enact legislation to add that secondary weight. And that is it. Do you like me to leave now?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We don't have any questions. Yes. Do you have any questions?

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Doctor. Beth. Okay. I think one of the challenges here is that we continue to have an issue about what if the CTE language. So if current tuition at one of the independent schools' CTE is $24,000 a year, And the base funding that a district gets is significantly less than that we continue to have that gap.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And if it's a non

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: operating district, we continue to have no way to fund that gap.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And so I guess I'm curious, the proposal that we gave you, you significantly reduced it. And so I guess I wanna understand better your choices about not having independent schools meet EQS or get approval from the State Board of Education around their spending. And then the part about With language That it needed to essentially The district needed to charge Sorry, the independent school needed to charge the same amount and be sort of approved at each district. Which part of that was designed to not to ensure that the district actually have enough money to pay the schools. And so I'm curious either how you see yourself solving those problems in your proposal or why you don't think they're problems that need solving.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: So let's go through it section by section to that part. I think a huge give here was to accept the 5%. So because we're instance, yeah, it should be a lot more than that. Yeah. And we just, like, in an effort to get to yes, went, okay, it's gonna for instance, you know, I haven't looked on the calculations carefully, but that will be a huge hit for some of these items, going to only 5%. And we're just saying, okay. We obviously, Manila, the EQS is the old chestnut that comes around every year and we have the same debate endlessly.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I've never been involved in this whole country.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Independent schools are independent schools, and that's the difference. They don't adhere to EQS. They have their own standards. Have the rule of 200 series. Those are some of the A couple have gone that route to out of the ranking. And that would remain under this construct. And so that's I mean, that's just you have to know what's a nonstick or not. I mean, I the that would that would mean they're they're not the schools they are now. They become very different schools. And it's basically, they become public schools. And that's just not So anyway, let me put it another way, the construct you've suggested would leave forward the Spurmburg Long Trail out of Emirates, raise any additional money.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Would they not be able to meet the EQS standard?

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: They would have to, you know, there's all kinds of EQS standard are myriad, and that's not the way that schools operate. They operate differently. And so so that's the 5% we took out with the other two types of U. S. The issue about the one, you have in many cases, with these independent schools, you have, like, a handful of larger towns and then a number of smaller towns, some of which on the, you know, on the outside could, you know, could go to a different school, perhaps. But if you have if you have the system set up so that one little little district over here with one kid can shut down the whole thing, That's not that's just not realistic.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: What would they be shutting down?

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: They'd be shutting down the ability for the school to get the money it needs to operate. So to condition it on

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Isn't that similar to how the public system is set up under the proposal, though? Like, for supplemental district spending to happen, for a district to spend more on its high school, it needs to approve supplemental district spending at the

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: No. I think they I think what's gonna happen is that the within a district, a larger district, the money's just gonna get moved around. It doesn't have to go. The the the district will get the money, and they will move from one school to another. And this is really the elegance of this proposal, way we've done it with the with the requirement for a vote, is that it really lets these districts do the same thing. The only difference is it requires the vote of the public to do it as opposed to what would happen with the with the public system, is they could just move the money down. So so what we have here is a construct where in order for an independent high school to receive additional dollars, it has to the school would have to get the approval of the voters of the districts who wanna send their kids. And that's a pretty significant you know, we trust the voters. So that's how that would work.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So the district would have to vote But they wouldn't have to vote on the additional spending. They would just explicitly Is that what you're saying?

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Yeah. They wouldn't necessarily have to go for supplemental spending if they didn't think they needed to.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And in the scenario of the non operating district being able to raise enough money, you're just assuming that that would never happen?

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Scott, you have a

[Rep. Scott Beck]: think

[Rep. Emily Long]: Not sure I understand your Yeah.

[Rep. Scott Beck]: Well, we wouldn't think you have. I I think we're getting the now and future state mixed up. We haven't actually set the rules for how voting will happen in the new districts. We'll in order to do to do supplemental spending, will just the majority or will every town or will you know? Mhmm. We haven't figured that one out, and we know we've got equity. As this was presented, I think we were looking at it the current state where you've got five towns. Three of them may have three quarters of the students. You've got one that's got 1% of the students. The way this is written, the 1% votes know not to spend the supplemental on their three students, that would prevent all the other students from having access to a high school, essentially. I

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: think that's exactly my concern that the there are pieces of this that are designed around sort of us thinking of things as they are now. And I'm worried we're not thinking about all of the details and the equity in the context of the underlying bill that's before us and what that what our schools how our schools will be aligned and funded in the future.

[Rep. Scott Beck]: But a lot of this is nothing happens until there is the study. Yeah. And if the study comes back and says it costs more to educate Yeah. Through 12, then this doesn't happen. If the study comes back and says it costs more, or we haven't dealt with special ed, and we haven't dealt with CTE in And this so if we come back with a solution for CTE, then none of this happens. I think a lot of this- Or we could just

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: have the same argument. Oh, get it, yes.

[Rep. Scott Beck]: A lot of this, I think, is we're trying to deal with perceived problems in the in the present state continues, which may not be problems if, as some people believe, there is adequate documentation that it does cost more to do to do students in a a separate Yeah. T nine twelve. Okay. So I think that's what this is trying to do, say it has to be under the 5%. And it goes in as supplemental spending, but they can spend more. And until we do what we're gonna do with CTE, the present law prevails Mhmm. Which is what this is. It's the present law.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: So all with the CTE, all we're really doing is lining up the two independent schools with the way that the rest of the system works right now, because the rest of the system continues to set tuition the way they do now. So why would you single out the two independent school CTEs and say that they totally not break the same way that they have, and that all of them do We haven't decided how CTE is funded in the future. Well, we haven't, but right now it's current law. It would remain current law under the survey would continue. The default is current law so that CTEs would set their student tuition the way they do now, because we haven't talked about it at all. So all we're doing is lining up independent school CTE with the way that the rest of the system works.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I mean, I think if the rest of the system continues to operate that way, including what's in this bill, with a foundation formula as is in this bill, the entire thing will break.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Well, I think you're right. I mean, I think you're right to the extent that we know that looking at how we're gonna fund CTE is a major challenge for next year. That's one of the things we have to do. But the way the bill is written, public CTEs aren't just continuing to operate the way they do indefinitely until it gets changed. It holds the line of those CTEs in I the same think is

[Rep. Emily Long]: my eleventh year in the building, and I know you all have a lot of fears too. I think we've talked about how CTEs are gonna get funded for every year that I've been in this building, and we have made no changes. So in the sense that we have kept the existing mechanism in law, it's not even touched in this bill, but I'm not proposing that we do touch it, to make sure that those public CTEs receive the funding they need for those kids to access CTE services, then I think there needs to be a mechanism for the comprehensive CTEs to also have the resources they need so those kids can receive those services. Right now, the way they receive those resources is through tuition. Mhmm. Now one could say, well, don't worry about that because we're gonna fix the whole CTE funding system in next year or in 2027. But like as I said, I have seen this conversation for eleven years on how we're gonna function or fund CTEs, and we had never done that. So right now, I'm coming from a standpoint of, I don't unless something happens differently than it's happened in last eleven years, I'm not expecting a funding change in 2627. If there was one, I mean, I'd be so happy.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Actually, strangely, have a lot of faith that the Agency of Education is going to deliver us a comprehensive

[Rep. Emily Long]: I'm CTE always optimistic, but I'm always cautious. And right now, in the bill, the way it was sitting right now, my kids in my area that access those two CTEs have no way to get the resources to run those two centers.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: By the way, we should have started by saying thank you for this.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Take it, take it,

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Because we, it's We tried to build on that, and we recognized that it was a Trying to figure out a way to get to something. We had to obviously include, bring back in some of the schools that got left out of this under that proposal. Accepting the 5% is a huge gift, because we know that it costs 12% more right now. And we know that what a 5% means a 5% hit, and with no ability to move money around. Then I think we just had to recognize what you're doing, by the way, with every district of even one kid, but that also has the potential to have a little tail wagging the entire dog, and that has its problems.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think this bill has many instances of that.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Yeah, so that's where we are. I'm assuming I I also want to just back up here a minute and, you know, really just recap a little bit of how this has the independent school tried to put this whole thing to bed in January when they suggested bringing from six, from 50 something down to about 19, the number of schools who could receive tuition, bringing them into areas where their interrupter delivery system, where the system relies on independent schools for its success, and then agreed to give up tuition when they thought there was a wait, and even subsequently agreed to give up, which philosophically was a challenge, to give up the notion of out of state tuition. So I just want to So there was some hope that with that, done talking about independent schools, we could move on to talking about the 96% all the time, which is what we've been trying to get to. We've been trying to do that. They keep getting dragged back into this. That wasn't intended to What I'm really just trying to say is just to frame the reality of what happened over the course of this. Huge, good faith shown and wanting to move into the system in a way that was going to work for everybody, recognizing the difference between rural Vermont and urban in a way that these schools are so integral, especially in rural Vermont. And then, here again, giving up a little bit more by going to 5%. And it's okay, probably survive. You know, we're also looking at this big construct, like you've talked about, a lot of pieces in that construct, individually we don't like.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: What do mean in the Senate?

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Yeah, each of us have our own pieces of it. Know, and everybody, you know, like, I'm not a fan of class science standards, eating a lot of things, we all are.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Oh, I mean, absolutely. I mean, there are many things in here that I would not choose for me or my district. So,

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: but I think we don't know where you're gonna end up in the discussions that are going on with the second half of the bill. We haven't quite figured that out, but we can And agree on there's a chance here to have a comprehensive package that works, we need to think about it, continue to think about this as

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: comprehensive package. Yeah, no, I'd love us to all be here for all the kids in the state, right? That's why we're all here. And we have a very lengthy bill, we're spending most of our time on just a few small sections of it.

[Rep. Emily Long]: Yeah. I think it's also worth I don't

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: know if that's sort of what we wanted Just kind

[Rep. Emily Long]: of a finer point, but I don't know if you meant this or not, but in the draft that you gave us at 02:00, I think it precludes a public receiving school. Yeah, we did not.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Yes. Okay.

[Rep. Emily Long]: All right. Okay. So they would be able to

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. I think it's gonna be significantly less relevant with much larger districts, but it was not intentional to So I think we were quite serious about how we'd really only gone as far as we could. And so it's gonna I think we're really gonna need to take a look at this and

[Rep. Scott Beck]: compare the Yeah.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: In a way, though, when you said that, I had taken that largely as being 5%.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Oh, that's so interesting.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: And 5% is, for us, it's a huge step.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, I hear that. All right, so

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: if we take some time with this, do we want to try to meet again this evening? Yep. Think maybe You

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: made that noise.

[Sen. Brian Campion (Senate Education Chair)]: Will you make 07:30?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, 07:30 sounds good.

[Rep. Scott Beck]: Does that work for you? Yep.