Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Through it, and then we'll hear from the bill's sponsor. Aye.

[Rep. Jay Hooper]: Okay.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We are live. This is House of Education Wednesday, 01/21/2026. Gonna do a walk through of the proposed h six eighty seven. And then do we generally hear from the sponsor first and then move on to the walk through or do we walk through first and then move on to the sponsor? Any guidance folks? I don't remember it, but I Why don't we hear from the sponsor first? Exactly. And on your way up there, representative, would you mind closing the door?

[Rep. Kenny Wazasek (Barre City)]: Good morning, everyone. Good morning. First time in the new house ed room. So this is fun. Kenny Wazasek, Berry City, sponsor of the bill. The intent of the bill is really just to clarify the legislative intent of the moratorium on new independent schools. So I've heard from stakeholders as well as a constituent of mine who works at a therapeutic school where if a therapeutic school transfers ownership, that counts as a new LLC and therefore a new independent school and would not be allowed to open because we have the moratorium. So this is just to clarify that if there's a transfer in ownership management of a therapeutic school, that that is not a new therapeutic school. It's the same independent school that's been there, just new management. I think there's some valid, you know, policy questions about ensuring that the services that the students have been receiving in those schools continue when there's this transfer. So I think that's something that you all as educational policy experts should dig into and that the bill does not get into. I think that's a valid policy question as well. But I don't think that the moratorium on the independent schools was intended to block these kinds of of ownership. So and like I said, I have a constituent who works at a therapeutic school who said, you know, she was like, I could care less who runs it as long as I'm able to get my students what they need.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Is your constituent involved in the transfer of ownership situation? Oh, no. Okay. Just in cases. Alright. So just for the committee and a little bit of background, several years ago, and the Ledge Council probably correct me on some of this, sort of in the waning days of a budget discussion, the Senate put in language that said there is a moratorium on the approval of any new independent schools. We have at least one circumstance currently out there where an independent school is going to close or it's going to be bought by another independent. These are all therapeutic independent schools. And the agency has basically said, this is a new independent school, even though it's basically just changing ownership of a current independent school, by law, it's a new independent school that would have to go through a independent school through the process to get a moratorium on that. So that's kind of the situation that we're facing right now. So six eighty seven would essentially say that the moratorium does not apply to a school that is being purchased to continue operating. Alright. The questions from the committee for the sponsor of the bill?

[Rep. Beth Quimby]: I guess maybe this is a

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: better question for Beth, I don't know. I guess my only question is,

[Rep. Beth Quimby]: does it make more sense if this does make sense and we want to add this, does it make more sense to add it as an amendment to the moratorium that is already, is that in Act 73?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That is a good question for legislative council. Okay. Great, thanks very much.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel. Let me just share my screen so we can look at the language together.

[Rep. Jay Hooper]: How's that? Great.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So this is H687 as introduced. We will walk through the specific language, but I just want to orient you, especially based on Rick 's question. So this bill does propose to amend the original moratorium language. And because that language lives in session law, in a budget, what we're doing is we're amending that budget section, which you actually did last year in your miscellaneous bill. So we'll just walk through all of it. So just to reorient you, because this is our first walk through of the 2026 session, Anything that is not underlined is current law. Anything that is struck through, there is a proposal to remove that language. And anything that's underlined, there is a proposal to add that language. So if we start on line 14, section one of this bill proposes to amend Act 78 from 2023, which was the budget, section E511.1, which created the moratorium on approval of new independent schools, new approved independent schools. And so that language simply stated, notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, the State Board of Education shall be prohibited from approving an application for initial approval of an approved independent school until further direction by the general assembly. And then last year, you amended that, and it's not underlined because it's current law now, in subsection B, notwithstanding subsection A, a change in either tax status or conversion to a nonprofit organization by a therapeutic approved independent school, absent any other changes, shall not affect the approval status of the school. So that was about essentially someone going from for profit to nonprofit, saying the moratorium doesn't apply in that situation. And so what this bill does is it not withstand subsections A and B, and the language reads, the moratorium on approval of new approved independent schools Sorry, I need to There's Zoom right in my way. I'm trying to move it. Sorry, okay. So bear with me in the scrolling. The moratorium on approval of new approved independent schools shall not apply to to changes in ownership of a therapeutic approved independent school. As that term is defined in 16 BSA section eight twenty eight subsection D, which you added last year. If submission of an application for initial approval of an approved independent school is required as the result of a change in ownership of a therapeutic approved independent school, that at the time of the change in ownership is already approved by the state board, the moratorium created pursuant to subsection A of this section shall not apply, and the agency and state board are required to process the application according to applicable state and federal law. If you choose to go forward with this, I'm sure we can think of a more eloquent way to say all of this. But basically, this is saying, a lot of this comes down to the state board and the agency's interpretation of what requires a new application. So, Section 166, which is the approved independent school, is the independent school statute. And it lays out what a school needs to do to be approved by the state board. A large portion of that approval process is found in the rules that the state board owns. And so those rules are not specific to every situation that would be a change in governance, ownership, etcetera, to an approved independent school. And so whether an initial application is required, in my opinion, is really a question of interpretation for the state board and the agency of education. And so if you're hearing from the field that they are requiring an initial application related to a certain set of circumstances and you want those certain set of circumstances and the requirement of an initial application is triggering that moratorium. You are going to want to know exactly what it is that's the holdup from the state board or the agency for processing that initial application so that the language that you pass is clear and there's no discrepancies about it, etcetera. So I don't know because this is not because this is really a question of interpretation. I think this language passes based on the information or works based on the information that I have, but you're really going to want to know from the agency and the State Board of Education what they would do with this language and the application they got and how they would do that. Does that make sense?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes, it does. Okay. Questions?

[Rep. Beth Quimby]: There any flexibility in here that if an independent school that had not been approved and could not start saw that a therapeutic school was closing, they could snap it up and transfer ownership and cancel the therapeutic part and do whatever they wanted? Does that question make sense?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Well, I think theoretically, yes.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I mean, and a lot of this is going to come down to what required in that initial application and what is required to maintain approval status. So, if approval is only given because you are saying that you're doing X, Y and Z and then you stop doing X, Y and Z, it would be a question for the state board and the agency of would that trigger any action? I am not the one who executes the law, so I don't want to give that analysis. But yes, in the theory, in the universe of possibilities, I think that is a plausible one.

[Rep. Beth Quimby]: Sounds like your answer is yes, it could technically happen, but theoretically,

[Unidentified Committee Member]: would be done about it if they tried to do it.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think that it's a little more nuanced than that. It would be a question as to whether something would be Okay.

[Rep. Beth Quimby]: That's, I mean, that's my only concern is this is going to be used as a loophole. But other than that, it makes sense.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And that's why understanding when you're trying to create exceptions to the rule, understanding the Getting the language right to create the exception and then understanding the unintended consequences to button it up is really important if that is your goal, to button it up.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: So just out of curiosity, is that because therapeutic schools are under

[Rep. Jay Hooper]: the umbrella of the independent school and they're

[Unidentified Committee Member]: not their own category? Correct. So if there was a way to separate and categorize a therapeutic school differently, that could be potentially avoided?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know if it would be avoided. It would depend on what that separation and the process looked like. But my understanding of the approval process is that therapeutic approved independent schools go through the same process as any other approved independent school. And this exception is specific to therapeutic approved independent schools who are changing ownership.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Which only became a separate definition last year. Correct.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: I knew there was a

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: In statute. I believe the board's rules use the term therapeutic approved independent school and have for a couple of years.

[Rep. Beth Quimby]: If they change ownership, are they also allowed to change name?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I don't know the answer to that question. I mean, I think, again, if it's an initial I would say this is a common sense answer, and maybe I shouldn't be giving this. But if you're submitting an initial application, you're going to call yourselves whatever you want on that initial application. If there's a contract in place, when there's a change of ownership, there's also a business relationship happening and contract terms that I'm not privy to. So it's possible that part of the sale or the agreement is, you shall not change your name. I

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: don't know.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: That's a private contractual relationship.

[Unidentified Committee Member]: Because of the tie in business, is there, when an independent school is approved, are they approving the program? Are they approving the facility? Are they approving a combination?

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Let's look at Get rid of Zoom stuff. Okay, so here are the state boards. And again, I didn't write these rules and I don't interpret these rules, so I don't wanna stray very far from just going through topics of the rules. But this is the approval process. This really lays out everything that's required for an independent school to be approved. The requirements so you can see there's a whole bunch of definitions. I'm trying to find the application piece. So, there is stuff on physical facilities, right? There is stuff on finances. There is requirement related to instruction, faculty, and special services. All of this is more detailed than section 166, which is your enabling statute for these rules. And section 166 essentially says, let's pull it up. On application, the state board of an approved independent school that offers elementary and secondary education, the state board shall approve if it finds those things. So minimum course of study substantially complies with all the statutory requirements covered all throughout Title 16.

[Rep. Beth Quimby]: And it complies with the board's rules.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: And so the rules also have criteria. And part of that is facilities, part of that is financial, part of that is staffing, part of that is courses of study. There's records retention, there's a whole host of requirements there. But how all of those requirements are measured to get that seal of approval would be a question for the folks who are interpreting that law. And

[Rep. Kenny Wazasek (Barre City)]: part

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: of that is the agency of education, and part of that is the state board of education. Ultimately, it's the state board of education that approves or does not approve education, but the agency does have a role.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So for now, since we're all a little bit out of time, I'm gonna ask legislative counsel to make this part of a growing miscellaneous education bill, and we can come back and revisit it. Just sort of in terms of we think about it, the House actually did put this moratorium in. It happened at the same time that we first attempted to try to differentiate between approved independent schools that are general study schools and those that are therapeutic schools. So I think that there's some debate over whether it was ever meant to have a moratorium on therapeutic schools. I don't know, we are not the ones who did it. But then also just to think about, we do have a real case situation that exists right now of one therapeutic school wanting to buy another and not being able to because of the moratorium and the future of that therapeutic school. And maybe this is against general philosophy that we should have only public services for students' discussion needs. But these are all things to sort of think about and lay on the table when we take it up next time. And it's interesting, as I sort of was delving into this, we don't have a moratorium on schools expanding. So anyway, was the initial moratorium was basically one sentence. And as it turns out, most things are, little more complicated than that in the real world. Alright, well we'll switch gears here and we'll move on to H-four 95.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Are you ready for H four ninety five?

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We are. Okay.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Again, Beth St. James, Office of Legislative Counsel, we're gonna walk through H 495 as introduced, and this is a short form. So we are just going to be looking at the statement of purpose, which is all there is to look at. So this bill proposes to require the consideration of existing regional configurations within the state when considering drawing consolidated school district boundaries, including counties, the Vermont Superintendent Associations superintendent regions, the Vermont School Boards Associations regions, designated agency regions, CTE service regions, planning commission regions, and transportation maintenance districts with the goal of encouraging the creation of community schools, climate resiliency, targeted population growth, and workforce development within a consolidated school governance system and a commitment to the state emergency management plan. School district consolidation would also involve strategic coordination with the Vermont State University. The bill also proposes to define which decisions within a school district shall be a function of local control at the district and community level and which decisions shall be made at a higher state level. And the title of the bill is an act relating to the consideration of consolidated school district boundaries using existing regional structures.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Thank you. Not sure you could add much more to that.

[Rep. Jay Hooper]: Precisely. Couldn't tell, mister chair, I'm trying to create a super bill that solves all my problems.

[Beth St. James (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I need a

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: little bit more than one paragraph.

[Rep. Jay Hooper]: Yeah. So firstly, mister chair, I appreciate you. I was surprised and excited the other day to receive an invite to come testify. Introduce yourself, if you would. The record, Jay Hooper, represent Townsend, Brookfield, Braintree, Randolph, Grand Isle, Rock Street. Believe it or not, I'm in my fifth term. I was out of pain still, but I did serve two terms, a total of four years on this very committee. Some days I miss it dearly. Other days I say, wow, you guys have a of duties before you. And last year, if you recall, I was being something of a nuisance animal about mapping. And I I think you remember I came in here on a daily basis. Not you. Welcome to the hellscape. It occurred to me that the likelihood that we were going to come out of last session with a set of mapping options was slightly higher than the Northern Hemisphere facility, recognizing that the mapping process is perhaps largely academic. I can appreciate that, but expensive experts aren't going to be the ones who make the decision about which one we go with, assuming there are options that materialize. I watch you all struggle with the fundamentals and that stuff. It's not easy. I can appreciate that. Among those struggles or issues of demographics, I don't know if it was yesterday or last week, but representative Harple maybe didn't mean to make a point in posing what I would think is sort of a rhetorical question, which she said something like, Who's to assume that we're always going to see a population decline? I think that that was a prudent question to ponder, and it will be one that we should embrace as to the strategy maybe that we consider when we think about the future state. Mr. Chair, I always appreciated your word nimble when it comes to considering what the speaker says is all options on the table. And I think this short form bill is fairly self explanatory. I think it's got quite a lot involved. But part of the purpose of such a robust set of large concepts is so that this bill could go to most committees. Because I believe that there is only one future to public education in Vermont, and we don't know what it is yet. The only way we figure out what that is is that everybody digs into this highly complex subject matter, because it's extremely political. It's emotional. To me, I think Act 46 traumatized a lot of towns in Lerlin. I don't think we should concern ourselves, blame when we think about that. But we should, I think, think about what it looks like to impress upon Vermont voters and taxpayers that we're not about to just shut the lights off in all the small schools in rural Vermont. That's impossible. I think we have to buy ourselves some time to build on a ten, fifteen, thirty year plan. I know this is a huge thing, but what I'd like to see is this legislature create something that the next one can commit to building on top of. The most important concept in here to me is community schools. I have here district made thank Kathleen James for when I was on this committee first putting that. I'd never heard of it before she had said that ought to be the future. I totally agree, and that's why I listed the designated agencies. Because to me, it's kind of odd that we would have five different groups or however many, five and a half I've heard in the state, agencies that are fighting LBJ's war on poverty. Why wouldn't we have just one that works very closely with state government. Career technical education is, in my opinion, the other most important component to this. Because if you remember also last year, had a survey. I was going around, mostly to new members, but anybody who would answer the question, how many districts do you like? Five is not going to be a conversation that lasts very long, as you all are privy to. So what do you think, legislators so and so? And my most consistent response was 17, because that's how many, or thereabouts, how many existing career tech institutions exist today. I think it's a total tragedy, major inequity for the twenty sixth kid to be rejected because there's only 25 slots in diesel program or whatever it is that they applied to and didn't get to go to. We think about the future of Vermont's economy. We have to be serious about workforce development and what kinds of goals we have for the next decade. I think, as you know, there's no issue in Vermont state government that matters of public education doesn't touch. The housing crisis we've been talking about for election cycle, after election cycle, which is incredible to me that a crisis can last decades. It doesn't make sense to me, but what I mean to say is how many people do we want to live in Vermont and in what places, and where should we build regional high schools? The newer and fewer catchphrase I like. I understand student teacher ratios. That stuff that's that's also the fun you know, that's worked for you guys. Hopefully the money committees figure out a way to slow down the affordability spike, the impact that our climbing property taxes have on taxpayers. But in the meantime, I figured we all kind of got to get to work on this stuff. So again, thank you for inviting me. I appreciate the work you all struggle with on a daily basis, and I'm just kind of hopeful that we figure out which bricks to lay before which other ones by considering things that you've never seen before, including the future of technology that isn't I was talking to Emily the other day. Said this could sound like it's straight out of crazy town, but vertical lift technology is right around the corner. And so when it comes to busing, that's something to think about. And I think that the work that you all do this session, and for however many of us come back to this conversation next term, it won't just be this year, next year, the one after that. It'll be all the years, the next fifteen years. And I think we're at a place in time where we have a lot of systems and forms of government that are sort of tired, and I'm really hopeful that you all are created, showing leadership about decisions that the legislature really ought to make and that taxpayers and voters ought not have to stress about, which leads me to this, or the last piece here. Hope that there's a mission here to define local control, because it's a myth.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I have a few questions.

[Rep. Jay Hooper]: Somewhere here, it says using existing state structures. Are you making a hard proposal about No. Federal districts or counties? What you talking about? Well, actually, funny. When I was looking back at this, including counties, that I put in there just because that was among other more common replies to my survey. Well, why not 14? No, I don't have a specific number of districts to suggest. I'm just well, this time I guess closer yeah, this time last year, I was sort of imploring everybody to think about all the different variables. Five is rejectable, but I think the governor was just trying to start a conversation and starting at a low point so as to create a goalpost, if you will. And what have we got, like 200 or 112 currently? Something like that. To me, just firing all the superintendents is not a solution. It doesn't create nearly enough savings, and you'd have to hire a bunch of assistants to do the work that they It's not as simple as just attacking a certain set of things on your list. You kind of have to do something on everything. I guess, to answer your question, I would place emphasis on that 17 number, because it's the career technical education, I think, is going to be the way that we figure out solutions to our workforce struggles, which sort of unlocks a better, optimal potential to create a housing landscape that solves that crisis. So you're seeing that CTE is a hub for these regions? Yeah, kind of. I mean, I don't know exactly I can't remember the last time I looked at a CTE map, but you will recall that I passed out a map of my own, which I appreciate representative Brady referred to, I think, as the Uber map on the floor. I was flattered. I sent you sort of a messy, rough draft, and I always said to people, I'll be happy to share my crayons. The point was that we can kind of think about these things without experts because I mean, we're gonna have to ask the experts, of course, but we have to be the ones who make the hard decisions. So we might as well start putting it in front of ourselves, familiarize ourselves with the options. And that's no small thing. I realized that there were a lot of people in this building, probably the majority of lawmakers, senators and House members alike, maybe were more comfortable with delegating those concepts to an off season, off duty, a task force. And we did that, right? And I wouldn't characterize their work as a failure. I think they did very valuable work, and we need to use it. But it does seem to me that the mission of coming into this session with options isn't as yet to be satisfied. I hope that at some point we do kind of have things to weigh.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: On that note, Jay, just because of the way legislation works, this is a bill that would need to be flushed out because it's a short form, and it would need to sort of pass through all the usual steps and it would become law in July if everything went swimmingly. But that sort of implies that the legislature should not be drawing maps to housing.

[Rep. Jay Hooper]: Well, I I don't mean to imply that this should pass. This session, to me, that's taller. This is meant to be a a platform, a vehicle to sort of create conversations that can go a lot of different places. And so with all due respect, I do not see this moving very far anytime soon. I just am hopeful that this inspires a couple committees to think a little bit more relative to the work that you're all doing.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Go to Beth Quimby. You

[Rep. Beth Quimby]: made a statement towards the end of your testimony that local control is a myth, and I would love

[Rep. Jay Hooper]: to expand Totally. More on Okay. The notion that voters locally have any control on their budget is So if and only if enough voters get together on town meeting day to say no, do they have impact on a dollar figure that does not correlate directly or hardly even indirectly with their property tax bill? They control who it is that they vote on to the school board, but the school board has 10 to 15% capacity to impact the budget that they're trapped in.

[Rep. Beth Quimby]: So when you say local control is a are you saying local control of your budget is a myth or that the only thing that a school board does is deal with the budget?

[Rep. Jay Hooper]: What I'm saying is that the ambiguous nature by which we throw the term around have that An answer to that question is almost really hard for me to create. Don't really my perspective on local control is town meeting day vote, that's what we think of as local control, right? And then, of course, the democratic process of electing your own school board, but that shouldn't change. You vote on town meeting day, so what? You're still going to get a your mailbox is going to have a different tax rate than you know, it's not there's hardly four like There are no two school districts that aren't competing for resources that our yield bill sets, and that we are on the hook, the legislature, for math that we didn't ask for. And it's not like I guess it's a shame to me that districts have to compete for resources, And teachers have to campaign for pencils. They have to spend their own money to make sure that they have what they need when we have an administration asking for cuts. I don't think you cut your way out of a spending problem. I don't think we spend too much money on education. I don't think there's such a thing. I think that we have very few guidelines as to what it looks like to not spend frivolously. And that isn't to say that everybody does.

[Rep. Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I'm going to close this. A much higher level debate as opposed to what's in front of us. Have some testimony at 10:00. Thank you very much for your time. You're welcome. We folks wanna just take a very hard five minute