Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: And we're live. Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the House Education Committee on 01/07/2026, 10:30AM. Our next testimony is going to be from an update from the commission on the future of education and assuming their recent work with act 73. We have two people in front of us that for this committee actually need no introduction, but I'm still going to ask them to introduce themselves and then they can provide their testimony. Thank you.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Good morning, committee. Jay Nichols, good to see you

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: all again, welcome. Peter Conlon, I was the vice chair of the Commission on the Future of Public Education. Can you admit Kate? Got her. Jay, just before you start with the main testimony, I just sort of want to reorient everybody in the work that we were doing on the commission. You recall Act 73 sort of focused the work of the commission on a list of questions to consider and make recommendations on And I think it's important to note that we sort of did our work under the sort of understanding of Act 73. So it refers to in many cases the concept of bigger larger districts. Some of that is tailored to the language that is in Act 73.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Yeah, I was actually gonna say a similar thing. Went with a predisposition that this is the law, we're gonna assume that everything passes away that it's written, and then we're gonna put this forward as a plan as we were asked to do by the general assembly. So take that, for what it's worth. So what I thought we would do, if that's okay with everybody here, is we would just go through our main recommendations, and you all have a copy of those. I copied them right from the commission report. So if there's any formatting off or anything, it's because of my copy. Think anybody else's job. Our first Jay,

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: would it be okay to ask questions as we go through? Is it easier for you to It be easier to ask questions

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: as we're in each section. Okay. That will be absolutely fine. Thank you, representative Kelly. So the

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: first thing we're asked to do is come up

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: for recommendations for roles, functions, or decisions should be local and what should be done at the state level. So, and I'm just gonna briefly run through these, not read everything to you. We essentially felt that everything should be done at the local level unless, well, with the exception that there's a policy that's set by the state, then the local school district, whatever that might be, whether it's a school district of 25,000 kids or 50 kids, they should be in a situation where they have to have a model policy that is at least as stringent as the state's model policy, which is something we currently do. We felt that the vision for public education should be set by the agency of education with the state board of education together. And that it's important that you folks resource them in a way that makes it so they're sufficiently resourced so they can actually do the work necessary. I'll just go through the bullets, Chris, and then questions. We felt that local school districts should be provided with the autonomy and authority to implement and adhere to the vision set by the state, but the state should provide appropriate levels of oversight for that work, especially when it's related to statewide priorities. So if the state says XYZ is a priority, don't just tell local school districts it's a priority, provide them with the resources including state support, professional learning, whatever is necessary so that that can actually happen. And the commission recognized that this is a significant consideration that warrants further exploration discussion between you folks, ALE, and the SBD. Okay? We also were charged with talking about a standardized simple ballot format. That is in the document, not just testimony, it's in the final report that was sent to you. And that was centered around the education opportunity payment and trying to make sure that the ballot was as simple as possible. So that if a district went above the foundation formula, it was gonna spend extra amount, the voters would vote on that and know what they were voting. Our commission was not able to come to agreement on the exact language of that. We did come to agreement on most of the language. There is a dangling question out there that folks are probably gonna discuss in this committee. Do you wanna talk about it now or?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Probably will be discussed actually more in waste needs.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Yeah, I would guess probably, that's true. And basically what we felt is that commission members fell in two camps. One camp felt that additional language would provide greater clarity in transportation and tax implication to voters. Others thought that excluding additional language would make it more simple and reason that a school board that does not pick the tax effect of supplemental spending with a reasonable degree of accuracy will see it voted down. It all came down to language that says the supplemental spending will cost x per $100 extra in your, it wasn't tax capacity anymore.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Think it's either tax rate

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: or tax Tax rate or something almost on. And I think there was about half a million that said, You think that's just confusing for people? Let them decide. You're choosing to vote, or raising your budget by 2%, it's gonna cost $300,000 And the other group said, no, we should say this is what it's gonna actually mean for your individual taxes. And so that's a dangling issue that's felt to be decided by the general assembly, should you decide to go with simpler ballot language. We also had a lot of conversation around the issue of collective bargaining. And what we came through for a conclusion, and you can see it underlined here, Although the commission did not have time to take testimony in the issue, the majority of commission members felt that compensation and benefits, including health insurance, should be negotiated collectively at the same level. Now we had some discussion, should that be at the local level, So that when a superintendent and the school district's lawyer and the board are all negotiating and the union and the union lawyer are all negotiating with each other, should it be at that level? So that you could use those two things, listen, we're giving you a little bit of a break in insurance, but because of that, your pay is gonna be a little bit less or should it all be done at the state level? And our conclusion as a group was it should be done at the same place. We're not telling the general assembly where that place should be. Either do it all at the state level or do it all at the local level. So that those two things are coupled together so that when you're having negotiations, it can be part of the process. That's the thinking behind it. And almost everyone in the committee, I think other than one or two people thought that that made sense to have it be together, couple of them, back to how it used to be. No, I shouldn't say that, because it No, used to be one way to Exactly. So either at the state level or at the district. Questions on anything in section A? Of course, can always come back to that answer.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Just so you all know, representative Conlon said he wants to use every minute of this next hour and a half.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: So, have to ask questions. You can also ask them as we

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: get done the whole thing, if you have

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: things that pop up that you think of that relate to other areas, that's fine. Our second, go ahead,

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: go ahead. You're I'm thinking about the state versus the local level. And so if we move to the benefits per your recommendations being negotiated at the state level then that will mean a compensation would and so we would basically be moving to

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: statewide borrowing aid. That's correct. Okay

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: and did you get any testimony?

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: We got no testimony.

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: That's a really big device Yeah.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: No. The testimony will take place here.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Yeah. That's all we want. Right.

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: Yeah. Okay.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Yeah. But we did not take

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: a testimony. We we get to end our own. Yeah. That's right.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: But if I understand it correctly, it's that because currently the health insurance is negotiated statewide, but everything else is negotiated on the local level. So the main idea is put it all together. Either you go back to having the entire contract, health insurance benefits, everything local, because you might kind of negotiate between those or make it all statewide. Don't have half done one way and half

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: done another.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Be consistent. Yeah. Okay.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Perfect. Representative Long? Oh, did you? Sorry. Oh.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: It's just helpful, I think, for us all to remember, and correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason we went with health insurance at the state levels was to have a larger pool and to be able to lower costs. That hasn't worked out. That's my whole point. The reason was simply, I'm saying simply on purpose, simply to reduce spending in health insurance, knowing that bargaining at that level, we could probably have a larger pool and be able to negotiate it. It has not worked out that way, that's why we're in this

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: I supported that. And I'm not saying I wouldn't support my back there, but I do think personal, I think most the felt that coupling is the way to go, regardless of which way

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: you want.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: I have opinion which way it should go. Peter might have a different opinion. Oliver also might have a different opinion, but we all think it should be at this point.

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: Thank you.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Thank you. Good? Thank you. Section is what updates to the rules and responsibilities of boards and electorate needs to happen. So this note is kind of important, it's consensus of the commission that even under the provisions of larger systems as envisioned by Act 73, most of the current central functions of school boards and electorate should stay the same. So we think the stability is important. Even if we're gonna do merger and there's gonna be tons of changes required if you folks do decide to force some type of mergers, we do think that we should keep the idea that school boards are still gonna be basically the same, they're how gonna be obviously be less school boards, less school board members across the state, all those types of things. And listed below are some recommendations that we think either are gonna require a change in law or that we think need to be emphasized. Go ahead, Erin.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: I have a different question. Yeah.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Did you approach this as thinking of districts as operating districts? Yes. Setting aside the construct of supervisory unions and non operating?

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: We did not talk about, there's a little bit about supervisory unions at the end. Did not specifically talk about supervisor unions, but we did say, and that would be the fifth bullet we'll get to after, there's a section in this, there's other considerations by the committee, and we talked about two or three things that we think if you're gonna keep supervisor unions, should fixed. And we'll get that at the very end.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Think Recommendations largely assume school districts operating

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Well, I think you bring our systems.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Think you bring up a point of clarity. This is really talking about school district boards as opposed to supervisory union board. Yes, yes.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: The school district.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: So we think you should examine the laws, ensure they conform with changes that are contemplated in June, and make sure that citizen participation is exactly as possible. We talked about districts should be required to meaningfully engage with voters. We think school boards with school officials should organize opportunities in an accessible manner. But again, we just leave that up to local people to decide how they would do that, whether it's meetings in every town or if it's, if you go to bunch of towns that haven't been together before that are now formed into a new district, that part of the work of the new school board would be to talk about how are we gonna make sure that we have voter participation, voter input into our budgeting process, our governance, our operations.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: One of the sort of motivating pieces of testimony that we did get was from Burlington and how they take their overall budget and sort of the calculations of weights and then how they develop the budgets for each of their schools within their district, was sort of a factor on this piece. Trying to

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: make it needs based so that if Edmonds Elementary, because of whatever circumstances needed extra resources one year, and there was more need there than other schools, all working together for the common good of

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: that community. They also have fairly well operating school councils that the principal works with in terms of developing the budget for each of those individual schools. It's pretty interesting it'd be worth us having some testimony or something. And the

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: business manager there did a great job, Nathan. Sure he'd be glad to come to you guys.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Want to wrap on?

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Not to belittle just for clarity. You mentioned Burlington, but do you think that's mimicked in multiple school town districts around the state, single districts that are multiple towns and schools?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: They seem to have the most sort of formal process. They sort of operate in a way that almost mimics what would happen under a foundation formula. In other words, they sort of know their overall budget. And then using very much using the weights for each of their individual students, they parcel that money out to the schools, looking at the weights of each individual student. And then the principal and other people in the district that work with the sort of community council at that school to figure out how to spend that money.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: So I'm still trying to understand why that's any different than multiple town, multiple school, single district? Because, I mean, isn't it done the same way?

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: I don't I don't I I would say that in

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: the district where I live, where we have multiple towns, the the the level to which the community is involved in developing the budgets for each of those individual schools, I don't think is as quite as sort of formal as it is. Okay.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: So community involvement is the thing. Okay. Thank you. That helps.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: We also talked about compensation for school board members. We think that that should be established at the state level, depending on how big the sizes of districts were. We think it should be separate from any foundation formula. We don't want to, know, if we give the board members a raise, we're hurting our kids, so we'd wanna take that away, but board members have enough on their plates. And we think that consideration should be given to the size and scope of responsibility. And I just put an example in here. Board members who serve a small single town with oversight of one school may receive different compensation than school board members who serve, or is it oversight of multiple schools? Because we don't know where you're gonna end up. You might still end up with, and you may choose to end up with supervisor unions, for example, place, I hate to mention Peacham, but we're in Perry House today, so much in Peacham. Peacham may have, I think they have five board members. So you may still have five board members for 70 kids in one place, and you may have five board members for 5,007 kids someplace else. So we do think that those roles would be a little bit different. Go ahead.

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: I am just curious about sort of the goals of doing that. I love that idea. Is it because people should be compensated for the work or are we also trying to create more competition for people actually running for office and being involved? Do you think it would have that effect?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: I think that the motivation was to say, if we are moving to larger districts with significantly increased responsibility, that there needs to be adequate compensation and that should not be funded locally or decided locally because it is far too easy for a school board to say, well, we're making cuts, we really should cut our own pay. And it would dissuade people from the board. I mean,

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: if we move to larger districts.

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: What's that? You're saying you think it would dissuade people that they're using pay?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: No, if they start cutting their

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: own. If we didn't have something like this, I think it would dissuade people.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: So we feel it should be set at a representative level for the amount of work that goes into it and funded guaranteed.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Okay, for my second part of your question,

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: and I think it would help people be more likely to take on that responsibility. Right now, 90% of our school board elections, I mean, is Nicole Mesa, golf figures, the number might be different. The last time she was executive director, was like 90% of school board elections, one person runs or nobody.

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: Yeah, often you really have to dig up someone by one. So I think this could create more civic engagement.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Good, hope so. And then of course, school district boards will continue to determine education policies within constraints of state federal law, that wouldn't change at all. School boards, we think, as a group, should have student members, so that student perspective is taken into account making decisions for the school system.

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: Yes. Do you think they should be voting student members?

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: We do not. So as a group, there's some of us that think that they should. I'm not gonna raise anybody's hand or anything. Some of us that think that you should have a junior and a senior, and the senior gets to vote, the junior hasn't got your training. Others think that they shouldn't vote. And of course, even if they did, there is some things that you have to exclude them from that, but there are ways to do that. But we did not, we never made a decision on that or even a recommendation.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Interestingly, we discussed and did not make a recommendation as to whether they should also receive the same

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: compensation. Good point.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: And did you get in at all to how many members, what age of the members, any details? I was part of that when the students were putting forth that there should be student members. That bill that your Mhmm. Are drafting. Yeah. Just junior senior, but the details of it. No. I think that I think that's fine.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: General assembly, and I think that may also be something that gets discussed. We have no idea of having the voting wards and that whole conversation.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Just that there should be some and then the details to be worked out later. Yep. Okay,

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: thank you. Okay, to move to C, okay. C is one we could probably skip, nobody really cared about it very this is the we spent

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: about half an hour or what happened.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Yeah, yeah, one afternoon. Easy one. The process for a community served by a school to have voice and decisions regarding school closures and recommendations for what that process shall entail. Was That probably at least 90% of our public comments related to that in some way, shape or form. This was very, very tough. We had

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: a lot of

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: passionate testimony, public comment, survey results. And so I can only speak for myself. Think I tried to lead the committee in a way that was compromising to try to meet the needs of what I thought the general assembly needed to able to do and at the same time, make sure that Vermonters felt like they were heard. I think we split that pretty well, but we'll let you guys decide.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Which is to say that really we probably were not unanimous on any one of

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: these points. No, no, I think we can say, before we were not unanimous On on any any point, yes. So this is where we came to final language on this. So we say going forward to commission convention times when a local school board may recommend that a school be closed. Talked a lot about, there are times where the state may choose to close a school. We just talked because of PSA violations. Now we call education quality standards or whatever. There's places in the law for that, and AOE has the ability to act in that capacity. This is not what we're talking about. This is the board says, we really need to think about closing Conlon Elementary School. There's not enough kids here anymore, or there's a bunch of mold in the building and there's another building down the road, should think about closing. This is for that process. So what we would recommend is the school board should form a steering committee to lead the work of considering financial school closure or repurposing. So, one of the things that came up over and over again, if we have a K-five school and you tell us now we're gonna be a K-one, we should have a lot of say into that. And so we heard that and added into language repurposing. The steering committee that would be formed may or may not have school board members as part of their body, that would be up to the board. The school board would hold multiple meetings, and we recommend no fewer than three, with a potential school closure discussion on the agenda. We recommend it starts as early as possible, and while not a statutory recommendation for you folks, we believe that absent extenuate circumstances, they should start about eighteen months, at least eighteen months. And I came strongly from testimony from the rural schools partnership. Sean Castle was very involved in that, do it as early as possible in fairness to everybody involved. At least one of those meetings should take place at each town or city where the school that is subject to potential closure or repurposing is located, or where students that attend the school reside with the goal of seeking meaningful input from those who stand to be most affected by the potential closure or repurpose. We also added, we had a lot of conversation about this and could not come to agreement, that either there'd be an advisory vote or a public input survey held and conducted in the towns or cities directly affected by the potential school closure or repurposed. The commission cannot come to an agreement on this bullet, but agrees that at least one of the above should be required. So the board is getting meaningful information from communities most affected affected. And then that steering committee should make a recommendation or recommendations to the board, And then that the decision as to whether or not to close the school should if the board chooses to go that way, it should be made by a majority vote of the entire school district by no later than a hundred eighty days prior to the date the school is supposed to be closed or repurposed. And the ultimate decision to seek to ensure that students are afforded quality educational opportunities and affordable, sustainable, and equitable system. So let's say you took Addison's and they decided they wanted to become a bigger district. And in that process, three, four years down the road, they wanted to close school, a school they would not close, one of Virginia's, pretty big elementary school. But they decided they wanna close Virginia's elementary school, okay, for whatever reason. And this is the process that would happen. And at the very end of that process, everybody in that district, whatever that district is, it's just for Jan's, which we're not suggesting it would be under Act 73, but if it's a whole big district, everybody in that district would vote. And that would be the determining factor on whether it was closed. Now, what would happen after that is if the folks in for Jan's feel like, or people in the school district feel like that should be appealed, 5% of the voters in the school district within thirty days of the date that the vote is certified could appeal it to the agency of education, who would collect records from the parties, including student opportunity information and financial information, and then that would all go to the State Board of Education. And the State Board has sixty days from receiving the appeal notice Start that process, they did not render a decision within ninety days, the SBE will be deemed to have denied the appeal, similar to how the Supreme Court orders. Okay, now I'm gonna read this other note, and then let you talk to me all you want. The commission notes that it has received many requests that it recommend a binding vote of the towns or cities served by a school that a district board is considering closing or repurposing. Instead, the commission trusts that people in the municipality is served by a school that is proposed to be closed or repurposed will use the opportunity to persuade the voters of the whole district to maintain its status quo if appropriate. In addition, the commission recommends the above appeal process, which creates the right of an appeal to the state board of education. We did not feel as a full commission, although the remembers felt we should, that it would be appropriate to tie the hands of a new district board. So that's why it's the way that it is. And it's also consistent with current law. Right. Many people that spoke to us told us that their schools couldn't close, some of them couldn't because of articles of agreement, but it's got nothing to do with state statute. I

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: think it's helpful to understand the current system we're in. And I'm going to make a statement. You're going to correct me if I'm wrong about it. It's kind of all

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Because of Articles agreement.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: And so this is what I wanted to get to, because right in the beginning here, you say it can be altered, but it can be altered, but any of your recommendations can be altered by articles of agreements. Aren't we talking about similar thing that we're doing today?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: So I think that this is a little bit of an area, and I think I probably missed the meeting when this came up, but in a future state state created school districts, I can't help but wonder whether articles of agreement would actually be a thing or governed by statutes.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: And that's

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: okay. That's I would much rather it be governed by statute.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: But currently because currently, articles of agreement are really they're binding, and they are they're voted on by the whole district. Right? So they're binding. And to get them changed around school closure, many of them say a vote of the town is required, and that even when a school only has 10 kids left in it We agree. You still can't get okay. So but I I worry about when I see this where it says articles of agreement can be written to Right.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: And and there's another reference a little later about articles of agreement. Yeah, I thought I let

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: it go down. That is

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: something that we'll have to discuss, because I have trouble seeing how articles of agreement are part of a future state of similarly created districts. Okay, now,

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: and only for myself. I hope they're not. Okay. But right now they are.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: All right. Rep. Brown, do have

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: a question? Yeah. Real quick, so the eighteen month timeframe that you recommended in the report, how does that match up to current practice in reality? When school It's all over the place. I mean, it

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: The place has been people working on it. Washington Central has been working on

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: it for I'm not sure I've ever seen anybody take anything less

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: than Either.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Think that language was very fair. I don't think that would be a problem. And again, if your roof falls in, the state still step in and say, sorry, the kids aren't coming That to doesn't And I

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: think that the language of the report is just sort of a recommendation, not a recommendation to create statute. Right.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Obviously, you create a statute, people will have to follow the statute.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: For contribution. Could you expand a little bit on your issue with the Articles

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: of Agreement? Just a little more. Well, if you have Articles of Agreement, you've got a school that the whole idea is to keep that school open no matter what. And Articles of Agreement were written that way originally, and that school went from 100 kids to now 30 kids. And even the parents of the school can say, this is not giving our kids the outcomes that they need. I want more opportunities. It's a school right down the road, a group of people that don't have kids in the school that live in that town. And I understand their rationale, but they can say, no, we're not closing the school because it's the center of our town. And then the kids are, in my opinion, kind of left hostage. If we can't create appropriate opportunities for kids in a school, then I think we should definitely look at closing that school.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: I'm expand on that because it's really important that we understand the impetus behind a community making a decision like And sometimes a board doesn't do well a good enough job telling a point. I think we've talked about this last year in this committee, what's going to happen with that building. And if there's not clear decisions or recommendations around what's going to happen in that building, the community has a right to say, we're going to be burdened with a building that we have so many costs that we're going to have to take on because we've decided to close a school where we we can have it spread out over five towns or 10 towns or whatever many in the district if you keep it open. So I'm not trying to point out that it's wrong that a community makes that decision. But I think students are not at the center of those decisions because financial impacts are humorous in a community. And I think communities have a right to say. And it's really a tough situation. So I appreciate the effort and conversation.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: I think this will be probably a much larger conversation in this room as we move forward to

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: the second. It serves to remember that our current system is a voluntary merger system. Mhmm. Yeah. And that's why we have articles of agreement. If we move through a system where the state is saying, is how it's going to be, how would that system operate should be in statute.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Another thing with the articles of agreement, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, my understanding is they're very different. So you have a lack of consistency across the state. So in this region, like where I was, there was a, there

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: was vote recently, but

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: you can do what you want.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: There was a

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: vote recently about perhaps closing the school in my area. It's like, you know, because it works this way in a school district, just for a housing union in Southern Vermont, doesn't mean that it works this way in here or this way here, because it depends on inconsistent articles of agreement statewide.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: It's also what I've seen in my area is that, know, sort of what does closing a school mean? You can pull all the grades out. Right. So essentially not operate it, but you're officially closing it.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Is it closing it completely, closing some grades? Yeah, it's very different. But if I can just say on that, normally the articles of agreement say that a school can't be closed. And if it is closed, it still has to be used for educational purposes. You get to define what that is. And I also just want say that if there was built into Act 73 or some other law of support for a community to repurpose their property that they would be taking on when the school closes, I think there's a different perspective. I said it's an impact, financial impact, but we really have to address the financial impact of those, I think. And I understand the challenge around it.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: One of the things though is that just because a district closes a school, that doesn't take the school off its books and force the town to own it. They have to

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Absolutely. What I'm saying is that the town has that in their articles of agreement where they have to to the town for a dollar, which many of them do, that is something they fear. And sometimes it's just attorney fees and engineering fees, right? For the next phase of the building.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Okay, for now? Thank you. Please, yes. Okay, so this is a fairly simple one, process for monitoring implementation of this act, so that it's transparent public facing. Despite and if you remember in the beginning of this, the commission was gonna be the one doing all the work. And, you know, then the governor's plan came forward, and you guys respond to that, and everything changed. So we still think that the guiding principles of efficiency, sustainability, equity should be key considerations. And we just share those here, but I'm gonna skip right by them and go right to here. Commission recommends that the AOE monitor the implementation of Act 23 in a manner that is transparent public facing, and we have things here like providing regular reports to you folks, providing regular reports to the state board, Any monitoring and future support, financial or otherwise, acknowledge a substantial reliance on local officials to implement these changes effectively. Therefore, oversight of the law should actively incorporate feedback from those responsible for carrying out these changes to the local level. We are concerned about overloading the system and having business managers trying to do two jobs at once, or superintendents trying to plan for this new system while they're living in the old system. Those are the things that need to be considered.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: If you can, and I should know this, in Act 73, was there a directive on the Commission of the Future of Education on the path forward for them for the commission itself.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: It was a change in the law.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: There was a change for the the directive. Yeah. But was there a any any language in there that basically laid out if there was a path forward for the commission or if the commission is gonna be

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: sunsetted That's

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: what I remember. Thank you.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Yeah. And

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: that was the original, so the original charter.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Correct. That was an exchange.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: That was gonna be done once we got, I think we all thought that we may have another six, ten months to help with shift, we don't need to do that. Other considerations in general, some of this is the part I talked to you about before. Major focus of seventy three is to improve quality of education. So here are some things that we think regardless of what the governance structure is we're utilizing, the commission thinks these recommendations should be thought about by the general assembly. Right now, students who change their residence within a school governance structure, we're saying should be allowed to stay at the same school if feasible, unless the student's educational team decides that moving to another school in the system is likely to benefit the student. So I'll give you an example right where we're sitting. If we're in Montpelier School District, and let's say for whatever you folks do, Montpelier at U32, or maybe it's smaller, it all becomes one system. When a kid lives within that one system and maybe moves a little bit across one talent to another, he or she can still be allowed to go to the same school. And a supervisor union structure however now they don't. So if I live in Montpelier and I move to Callis, even if my residence is closer to Montpelier School, I gotta change school and go to Callis. We think that's something that should be fixed in the system, okay? That might be a bad example, Caledonia's put it away. It's a bad example. Berlin's better example. I'll probably know there's tons of examples. Like even on my role, people will move from Berkshire to Unisbury, have to change schools, and they end up going twice as far to school because that's where their new talent is. And they can't fix that because they're separate school districts. If they're one school district, it's an easy fix.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: And as Jay said, this is one of the challenges with supervisory is that if you really can move to the next town over, that is a separately governed budgeted school district and to be able to sort of ease the burden of that move is really hard.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Whereas if it's a multiple town school district, it's all the same sort of organization. Money is the same, the staffing you can redeploy staffing. Yes, and

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: the, I mean, there are supervisory unions that have districts in them with multiple schools and multiple towns that do allow for Absolutely. Now, but let me finish because if what you're saying is that we're then we're gonna hit the wall of operating structure if we go from supervisory unions to supervisory districts. All over my county, we have this situation where some are operating, some are not operating. They're all side by side within each other. And if they all become one, they have to either be one or the other in my estimation in the current law. You can't treat children differently.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: So what I'm saying is you may need to update statute accordingly so that students who change their residence within a school governing structure should be allowed to stay at the same school if feasible, unless the student's education team decides otherwise. And the problem with the way supervisor unions, and Emily Simons and I have talked about this, would need, you'd have to change the law here. Problem is, it's like, I can't go if I shop at Hanifers and decide one day I wanna go shopping at PNC, they're not gonna give me the Hanifers discount. In schools, we should do that. It shouldn't be about the common good. So now I'm a kid and I move actually, I might even move closer to my school and I gotta change schools anyway. Remember who this hits? This hits our most transient population. It hits a lot of our immigrant students. It hits our farming communities. It hits our poorest communities over and over and over again. As a superintendent, I had some kids in my system that went from one school to another school to another school within my supervisors union and had to change schools four, five, six, seven times in eight years. That's not fair to them. It's stupid. We have to fix that. Even Oliver Olson said that's gonna be fixed. And I'm not knocking Oliver, it's the supervisor union type person at private school type person. It's not fair to kids. That's something we have to finally fix.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. So I think to my own experience, so in the supervisory union where I taught, the K to the eight schools were all independent, separate districts within that SU, and that happened the same thing. The kid would bounce among those schools. And then when they merged, all the K to eight schools became a one district within the SU, and then they had choice at that point. If because supervised regions are so very different too. So if within a supervisory union, the schools that operated the same grades were a district instead of separate districts, that would

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: help alleviate the sum. I think anything you do like that helps alleviate some. No, but it could be May not hit all of this,

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: but you could definitely do more than you're doing like that. Okay.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: And I think F46 did help with that in

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: some places. Did, I'll tell you my district, is eight, seven towns. It's still like, you go to the school that's in your town, but the powers that be, the superintendent especially, has much more freedom to say, we're not, you can just stay at your same because the funding's all the same.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Because it's better educational day, socially, whatever reason for Absolutely. That

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: We have a kid that's struggling, and my team has been working with him for three years, and now he's finally making progress. He actually moves closer to our school,

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: but he lives

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: in another town. Sorry, see you later. Yeah. That's not good news. Okay, thank you. Yeah, the second one, just as big, all licensed educators should be employees of the overall school governance structure, not of single school districts within a larger governance structure. This would allow superintendents to better deploy educators to meet student needs and provide more job protections for teachers in small schools. This already happened for special education teachers, and we suggest this change to apply to all licensed teachers. Example I'll give, I'll go way back in history, see yesterday, school nurse in a small school has a full time job. I think they've got 70 kids or something. Full time school nurse that town has made the decision to do that, partly because there's some needs there, medical needs. School not very far away from them has three times the kids, their nurses out on medical leave, and the superintendent can't move that one nurse even to the other school cover for a day or two, or even to go over an emergency, because that nurse is not an employee of that other school district, and that nurse doesn't have any interest in doing that. So the superintendent has, the kids are the ones that are suffering in that situation. We also have lots of places across the state where people are like, I'm an hired teacher in your district, and an hired teacher in your district, but your district's in a different supervisor union than mine, so maybe I don't get healthcare. So all kinds of things like that. I think this could be better for teachers, but more importantly, I think we felt it be better

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: for kids. So I'll just say right now, we did not get testimony about sort of the employment law because part of obviously in a supervisory union, have multiple districts who are the employers of the people, right? If you were to sort of move all of those people to be employed by the supervisory union, all of a sudden the supervisory union budget is Well, wouldn't be

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: a supervisory union, the way. Well, this is

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: the problem with That's the problem. Generally a supervisory union. I'm not sure you could

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: do this with that They probably have to be a supervisory district. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: So based on this recommendation, if a school district operated multiple high schools within that same district, an English teacher one year could just be told, you're moving to this other school, And you think that this is gonna be better for teachers? You get it? For kids, okay.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: It's better for kids,

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: but I think

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: it also could be better for teachers because right now what happens is the newer teachers in a school, when a school has to make cuts, it's all the newest teacher. If you get a bigger pool to draw from, and I'm the newest teacher, but now I got three different schools, yeah, I might not be able to teach at Williamstown anymore, but at least I have right to the job at Northfield, and I don't have to lose my job for some kid coming out of college who takes the job, which is exactly what happened, exactly what happens right now.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, and being in a big district of CVSD in Vermont and consolidating under Act 46, that has been one of the best benefits of our consolidated structure is the flexibility for staff to move, to make changes when we've had ups and downs in grade levels at different schools, when they've tried to do some different middle school configurations, been able to move some really highly expert coaches on certain areas to schools where there's a higher need. It's just so common sense, but that flexibility has been really positive generally for the district students and teachers.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Would say it might actually be Well, we had lots of little schools with little, and so therefore, if you were newly hired, your job would go away the next year based on enrollment and you didn't have the opportunity to move to another district, you have to reapply. Again, I'm sort of understanding,

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: I have to go to my own experience, The seniority was based on what building you taught in because we were all a separate district. So there came a point where it's like, I don't wanna go teach at the high school, even though I'm licensed instead of the school I'm in, because I'm now gonna be low And that ten years of seniority I've built up goes away. So what's the incentive for me to wanna take the high school job as opposed to middle school job? And now, again, it was a negotiated contract. It's not by building anymore. But again, that's different from every place you teach in.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: It provides significant job security.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: Stagility.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: So I'm not advocating for this, but because my SU has chosen to, under Act 46, merged more districts. So it's still an SU of bigger districts within less districts, some schools closed. But for many, many, many years, my supervisory union has hired teachers who will move and serve different school districts within the SU. So you have a small school, they only have art two days a week. They have two days a week here. There's two days we can another teacher. Right. I bring it up only because there has been a lot of thoughtful use of staffing to address the lower, smaller, rural population.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: I think that is part of reason why we didn't take it out of the shoe because there are ways to at least get

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: better at this. I mean, better, but I don't think you can employ full time classroom teachers.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: Even if you can't, and that's why I'm saying I'm not advocating for it, but we've had to compensate in our state around this.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Harple, did you have a

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure exactly what my question is. Can I express it as a concern? I think all of the reasons that you've given have me a little more convinced than I maybe was before. But I'd also just like to put out the perspective that working within a community school model, like I've worked as an English teacher at my school for fifteen years and built up that community with my students, with my colleagues. And I feel like it would be really heartbreaking if on a whim, a supervisor is just like, We've decided we're gonna send you to this other school and you're no longer gonna work at this school you've worked at for fifteen years. I'm not sure that's the best reason not to do this, but it is something to consider is that teachers might start to feel a little bit like, pawned if these decisions are being made arbitrarily or for the wrong reasons.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: That's why you have a CBA.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: New York City has that line, some very strict guidelines. Exactly. I'm going

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: to have that stuff built. It can't just be because a superintendent has decided, I like Sufi better than anyone.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: Right, yes, okay.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Yes. Teachers,

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: you know, still moving around.

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: Yeah. Just to make sure that that would

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: But one way is is and a person's gonna lose their job. Listen. We we can't carry two French teachers anymore. Right. I do it. Wow. We really do need a French teacher in

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: one of our other schools.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Right. It's an opportunity.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: It allows attrition to be Good job. Job stability for them.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Okay. Good job. Yes. Keep moving or like, it's a mess. So I wanna be really, really, really, really, really clear for the record. I'll talk and you'll listen. Representative Conlon did a great job last year telling everybody that 4,000 as practical. People got so hung up on the 4,000 that I felt and the rest of the committee went along with us that we should really put in here that were recommended to the general assembly, not strictly adhere to the guidelines of 4,000 to 8,000. And I wanna commend Peter because he said it over and over and over again that he wasn't stuck on 4,000. A lot of people out in community did not hear that. So that's why we just recommended here to really make sure you folks realize this. There's no magic number. I always say 1,000 to 4,000. I'm gonna keep saying that it's pretty good range for district. There's research that goes all the way up to 8,000. After 8,000, there's a lot of research that shows declining efficiencies and declining performance. So I'd be careful about going any higher than that, in my opinion. But we wanna make sure that you realize, as you think about forced merger, if that's something you choose to do, try to do it in a way that's gonna be the most effective for kids, for the system, and don't think, Ah, we've gotta hit 8,000 or 1,000 or three kids, whatever it is. Okay,

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: is that fair? Absolutely, yes. Did remind, I was looking for some past correspondence, and during the, I think the conference committee portion of things, the as practical we got deleted accidentally totally You said it over and over again, now

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: I want you to get hung up on it.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: It was only for about twenty four hours. Yeah, I remember that.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: So,

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: when districts are merged, if you choose to merge, and we're thinking that you're going to be merging something, right, because that's part of Act 73, you need to provide a reasonable period of time to voluntary develop articles of agreement for the newly formed district. If the newly merged districts are unable to pass and propose articles of agreement within that time frame, then the newly formed district should be governed by default articles of agreement that have been drafted by the State Board of Education. Obviously, you folks can do anything you want, and you could say, this is how it's going to be when we advertise these new districts. But absent of that, if you use the current model, which is articles of agreement, then we think that you should give them time to work on these, come up with articles of agreement that makes sense to them. If they can't do that, then there's default articles of agreement. And that's part that Peter wasn't there for, right? Any questions about that? We did discuss it a little bit. We did. Four, are we okay? All right. I do wanna share some of the themes here just to make sure that they're to the public, we're clear with the public.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: This comes from active partners in the surveys and the comments that we received. Active partners being the sort of folks, the community engaged folks that we hired to help us out with this work.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Respondents envision a public education system as equitable. So the vast majority of Vermonters want an equal, inclusive and student centered system. Want one that provides all learners with access to well funded schools. They want strong relationships, safe environments, opportunities for academic and social growth regardless of geography, and then monitors do care very much about their schools. Respondents overwhelmingly felt that the initial education reform process was too rushed. They felt it was disorganized, inadequate time for deep community engagement, and they felt particularly from vulnerable or historic underserved groups and those with boots on the ground, educators, students, and local boards. Respondents and these response are all Vermonters. Over my fellow Vermonters, education reform efforts must slow down and center the voices of those most impacted by the proposed changes, such as students, families, and educators, by prioritizing equity, belonging, or community identity over a rush structural changes at risk deepening disparities. The next part, you can look at that at your own leisure. It just talks about how survey frameworks work in terms of who's the most directly impacted. Skip right by that. Then to the bullet, it says, in the public input sessions and public comments of commission meetings prior to the close of the 2025 legislative session, numerous concerns were raised about the governor's education overhaul plan. This language is taken right from the document. The concerns thematically were that the plan is seen as top down, inequitable, and lacking community input. Nothing we have seen in further community conversations has indicated concerns have diminished. There was broad opposition to the five district plan. Accordingly, as the general assembly moves forward with Act 73 implementation, considering and responding to Vermont citizen input is critical. We, Vermont, must take our time to ensure educational system of transformation is transparent, upfront, easily understandable for all Vermonters, and that it will solve the issues that it was tasked with addressing. The conclusion is, as members of the commission, we strongly encourage members of the general assembly to carefully review this final reports of the company materials within the surveys. I read every single survey, well, it's 5,000 surveys, prior to finalizing the decisions you're gonna make. It's clear that any transformational decisions as contemplated by Act 73 are in the purview of the legislation of the governor. We tried to tell people that in public comment, that you do have the decision making authority, and by our constitution, as far as I can tell, the Brigham decision, you guys do. That said, Vermonters care deeply about public education and local control. And I think we all think in order for a major change to be successful, a critical mass and Vermont citizens have to be supportive of that change. We encourage you to take the time to ensure that major policy pursuits have the positive overall intent they claim to. It's important to take the time to get it right as opposed to just getting done. So, any other questions?

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Final questions or no?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: I'll make one final comment, and that is that as the sort of commission evolved, just wanted to say Jay took over and really kept us moving forward on task and we were able to produce a report in a timely fashion.

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: It's impressive. Thanks. Thank you.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: But Harple, did you have something?

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: Yeah, it's just a broad question, sort of about the critical mass of Vermont citizens. Because I know this isn't your group, in a redistricting task force, they're using the number of 5,000 Vermonters.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: That is from us. That is from them.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: We did that survey and asked me to share that with them to get all that information.

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: Okay. So I guess my question is, know I'm a little off, but we basically have like 650,000 Vermonters, right?

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Yeah.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: So compared to that 5,000 seems big and seems like

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: it was used as big, but also isn't big compared to 650,000. So what are we saying is a critical mass and how do we know

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: when we have that critical mass? After the thought that the numbers were very high. So when we first started getting the number back, said I think I said, think I had 2,000 write off or something. I said, it concerns me, I only got 2,000 people. They said, Oh, are you kidding? That's great survey results. Okay. Then we got like 5,000. But if you look at the survey results, I'm just trying to be transparent here. I'm glad you guys have made a decision, not me. Yeah. The numbers are, they are skewed in that it's mostly people that either have kids in school or are working schools or whatever. And their concerns, including mine and Peter's and anybody in law, I think are legitimate. But we also keep hearing from people we want lower taxes. So there's a dichotomy there. There's people saying cut spending no matter what you have to do, and there's people saying please don't destroy the system, having to spread the needles so that you are able to do both. This was

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: not a random survey. This was an opportunity for people to submit comment.

[Rep. Erin Brady (Ranking Member)]: No, I'm certainly not suggesting it was, and I

[Rep. Leanne Harple (Member)]: know that not everyone responds to surveys. So I just, I'm wondering like when do we say that that is our critical We've got everyone that is possibly ever going to weigh in on this. We've got their opportunity. How do we force people to weigh in on this? Mean, I know you can't

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: Oh, we are a republic. We're not a hold of democracy. That's correct. We elect representatives of Okay. Voting

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Anything else from this?

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: I was just going to take another opportunity to say how much I, and I'm sure many of us, really appreciate the work. And just to acknowledge, I think there are some folks in the legislature, some Vermonters, some folks in education field who feel that we didn't fully realize the promise of our initial construct for the commission. And so just want to acknowledge that personally, a bit of regret there, but also not to thank you very much for the work that we did under some challenging circumstances.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: To be fully transparent, when I resigned, I wanted to resign too, and was very upset. But I also knew that in my position, that would be taking an active principal and putting it in there. And I couldn't do that to my principals, and I certainly had no interest chairing the commission. The speaker asked me to do that, and I think Peter stepping up with the vice chair. Job was to get through to the rapport and do it as fairly and transparently as we could, and I think we've done that, but I really do wish that we'd had a chance to have the full commission do the work that we're supposed to do in the beginning, and I think we might be in a better place today, maybe not, but I think there's likely that we would have been.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: I have a sort of rosier view of that, and I look at, you know, not just the work that we did, but we also have the work of the redistricting task force. If you sort of combine the two together and then think about the original sort of mission of the commission, that there's a lot there that probably would have been the end result anyway of a report, could be.

[Rep. Jana Brown (Clerk)]: And that's not to diminish all the incredible work that's been done. Absolutely, very appreciative of that.

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: I'd love to follow-up on both

[Rep. Emily Long (Member)]: of your comments on that, because I think you're both absolutely right. And I thank you, Jana, for saying that. I wasn't on the committee when you developed that bill and that law, but I strongly supported the Commission on the Future of Public Education because of that. But Peter, I actually think that Representative Long's oh, Representative Conlon, I'm so sorry. Clutched him to call him Peter. I think it's really important to remember that part. And I don't know whether it's a rosy or glow or whatever, but what all of it is saying, both sides, are that Vermonters care, and I think we all kind of can agree on that, and that we have a deep responsibility here to make sure we do this right, which is what we say in here. And doing it right sometimes means we have to take a step back and take our time to make sure that we take the steps that are necessary and engage Vermonters in the process. So I wish we hadn't had to have this animosity that has come out from this law, but I think our goals are still all very, very similar, if not the same. We are trying to improve the education for Vermonters and for students at a cost that taxpayers can afford. So thank you.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Any last remarks from Jay or comment on anything?

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: No. But I definitely don't want to testify. Certainly have ideas at EPA as I know some other folks do, but you have tremendous work ahead of you, and actually take your time, try to do it as best you can, and if we can support you in any way, you have a great chair, I'm not today. Seriously, any way that we can help you folks, we wanna be part of the solution to help you any way that we can. We'll tell you when we disagree with you, but then if you decide you're gonna do something, we'll do whatever we can to try to make it work for kids and adults. Thank you. Thank you.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair; Vice Chair, Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: I think the vice chair has proven that he can navigate this committee process coming up. We're a squirrelly butt. She's done a great job.

[Rep. Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: We appreciate the work of the commission. We appreciate your time here today to tell us about the work. And we got a lot to

[Jay Nichols (Commission on the Future of Public Education)]: do. Beautiful. Thank you. Appreciate Thank you.