Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Can we open the joke or something? We are live. So this is House Education on January 27. I have a bit of time between formal testimony to spend some committee time talking. I thought it might be a good idea to kind of go around the table or just jump in. What people's takeaways have been from the testimony that we've received? So I would say, for example, what did you hear from the formal superintendent testimony from the three when we had the combined joint hearing? What were your takeaways? What do you think you heard? We've also heard from the VPA and the SBA. And so if we sort of try to put those together, what do people think they are hearing from those groups in the field? I I'll just hold one out because it was very clear in the superintendent testimony, no issues.

[Emily Long (Member)]: If I can add on to that. Thank you. That was

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: One thing I was going

[Emily Long (Member)]: to say was that was very clear. But also, this is across all those we've heard from and thank, is the intention to make sure that whatever we do does improve student opportunities and outcome. I don't think it always rises to the language, but the message works. I hear that from the field.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I think the word was timeline quite a few times from superintendents, timeline, timeline, timeline, strategic mergers.

[Emily Long (Member)]: From the cost drivers.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I didn't feel like the superintendents were using animus in their assessment. I can't remember

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: what his new name was. There was like one really modern superintendent that was talking about his background growing up in a rural community and how much his school did for him. Do you know which one I'm talking about?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Not among the three official sort of PSAs.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I guess this was in the joint session.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yes, it

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: was. That was too.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, so many superintendents. Yeah.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I think for me, I'm hearing more and more that there is an understanding that there needs to be some bigger districts. The bigger is the question at this point, the 2,000, the 2,500, whatever. I think that's a big discussion point that we have to talk about. What are those numbers? Are they still the 4,000 to 8,000? Are they the 2,000 or 2,500 to 4,000?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So just, we did get physician policy papers from both the BPA and the DSBA. They were perhaps a little broader, less specific than what we get from the superintendents. I'd say the VPA, if I could sum it up in two points, was probably one, just do SUs converting to SDs and overlay CSAs on the system. My takeaways from the sort of official PSA three that were up there telling us, talking to us, was 2,000 to 4,000, otherwise known as research based numbers. Although I'd say the research does support higher as well. I heard and other people could say, I didn't hear the same thing, but Band Aid it and OSUs as we've mentioned before. Those were kind of my three bigger takeaways from the superintendents speaking for the VSA.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I think we need to definitely talk about the CSOs model more. I mean, I'm still stuck on this. If we get bigger districts, why do we need a CSOs involved as another level of something that the districts are going to be able to do anyways?

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: My understanding of that, though,

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: was that with CSOs was also predicated on

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: don't get the bigger districts, do the CESAs instead. Right,

[Emily Long (Member)]: but I think

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: the Vermont superintendents were talking, still they gave this kind of a direction of 2,000 to 4,000, which would mean bigger districts, but still having CESAs involved. I didn't understand how that all operates.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: That's my takeaway as well, that they thought this just remained an idea that should be on the table.

[Kate McCann (Member)]: Well, even if you have your districts, thousand to 4,000 or whatever, if you're still within, you're close enough, South Burlington, Burlington, Colchester, whatever, and CBU districts, you still might go after busing or something that you all do. There might be a reason to use seesaws to negotiate bigger contracts on this.

[Emily Long (Member)]: No, completely, and that's kind of one

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: of questions I asked. Are we talking amongst even the bigger districts being able to combine in a seesaw?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Or if it's supposed to I be think we are. And just to follow-up on Kate's comment, every school district you just named actually meets the 2,000 to 4,000. So you would Right, knew that. What's that?

[Kate McCann (Member)]: I said I knew that when I named it.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And I

[Kate McCann (Member)]: was just thinking of that route.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And especially with specialized students.

[Emily Long (Member)]: We also heard from Piedmont, which is CSA. From? Oh, from, yeah. We've heard testimony from them, and that's a two county, essentially. It's not, not the two counties,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: but two counties. That's what we're do. Yes, it needs us.

[Emily Long (Member)]: That's important to keep mind.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Other thoughts or takeaways people want to sort of So,

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: we

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We will be at a point where we're gonna have to be, sort of like, everybody's going to have to decide what their red lines are or if they don't have any and are still willing to be open to various things to see how we're going to proceed forward.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: I still have some difficulty wrapping my head around the SUSD question. Because for example, where I taught, it was an issue with two school districts in it, one for the high school, one for the elementary schools, because if you had a different operating structure, you couldn't be in the same school district. And I asked the question, is that because we said so? Is that statutory or is there constitutional issues? I think the answer I've gotten is there's some constitutional issues, they're not just statutory issues. So I'm not saying that's my red line, but I need to understand how you eliminate SUs in certain areas of the state where you don't operate K-twelve systems. So I just need more clarity around that topic. Related to that,

[Emily Long (Member)]: I pulled this up as a reminder. I'm glad I did because it says on here from the superintendents, allow non operating district design. So there's that. But that wasn't actually why I raised my hand They brought it up and others continued to bring this up to us. That is school facilities and program. Think we really need to Construction. Mean, what they said was a firm commitment to capital investment in school facilities. We interpret that as our school construction aid program, but I don't know because we should own the interprets.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So I think I'm just going to repeat myself a little bit because I brought this up for. As I think about this, I sort of have a couple of things that I feel are really important for us to consider. So for me, I believe in SDs. I believe in no such thing as a non operating SD. And to Beth's concern, designation, contracting, whatever it happens to be. But if you were to say basically in statute, if you don't have a public school reasonably available, something we're going to have to define, then you're basically saying the school board's in charge of making sure that every child has a school to go to. And if that need arises where they need to contract with or designate an independent school to do that, that should be allowed. And I think that recognizes the role that the academies have played for two hundred years. But therefore you don't have a different operating system.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: And also not just independent schools. I think of Essex County where I'm from, where they go across the river. You know, that that outstates public schools option as well as independent schools for those deserts.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Act 73 already allows for public schools.

[Kate McCann (Member)]: Doesn't this one? Those on the radar for those new regional high schools.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Except there's so few kids in Essex County. I don't see them to

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: build in school. Mean, there's so few kids.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: But I want to make sure they're not harmed.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And we're talking about high schools, but we also know that there are, frankly, elementary school deserts where

[Kate McCann (Member)]: There are.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: It's elementary, not just the Historia County's Friesau, but elementary school deserts up in

[Kate McCann (Member)]: where I'm from too. Still a month.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: And maybe this is a question that we could ask the state board for help with since they tend to deal with driving and mileage and all of that as to what is considered reasonably close. Or you could just sort of say, school boards, you decide. That's sort of my concept to address that, how you can solve having no such thing as a non operating district. It does, frankly, it's on the table, get rid of the concept of choice.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Would agree.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I would say almost entirely.

[Beth Quimby (Member)]: Designate one school or designate

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: two. What about public school choice? So, when you talk about choice, I think once a new larger district is formed, what you do within those borders is up to the school board. And I think you could have whatever they want. Let's say you have a district and they offer there is a burden plus there's Mill River or whatever. You could set up a system where I would point out where you have choice like we have today with public high school choice.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Inter district choice the district choose that governance for themselves.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yep. And we can continue to have public high school choice that we already have today, which is not inter district. It is outside of your district. Right. I mean, you know, those are concepts. I have, I think, tomorrow we're gonna spend more time talking about BOCES from a national level, web presentation from all the folks that was recommended. I would say if any of you, Emily, maybe you're the only person that has connections with superintendents in that district to sort of say, hey, had a really great presentation. How's the return on investment for you? I know the superintendent at Springfield, so I asked him. He said, yeah, we haven't taken great advantage of it, but it's great.

[Emily Long (Member)]: I think it's still in the beginning stages for a lot of people, especially now since it's just been fully formed. I ask my foot to cut that level too. We're meeting. It's just gonna keep the board updated.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Something I'm struggling with is we have had these meetings where we talk about things we want, don't want, the things that, you know, or how we feel about all this. We keep feeling like that we keep having this circle, right? We keep saying the same things. And I'm wondering when do we get to when should we get to the point where we put something down that some of us are gonna love and some of us are gonna hate, and we we disagree and we figure out how to get resolution within those disagreements and in what order and what feel like we're missing that piece.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: No, are, I would say this week we're going to have to have some go, no go questions that we'll have to put on the table. Does it make sense to

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: like you put a theoretical map, I'll call it, because this is what we're talking about these days, in front of us to then start arguing over?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: We could do that. We could just argue over the guidelines that would create that map. We could argue whether we believe two to 4,000 is more appropriate than four to 8,000. We could argue, which would then say we're gonna produce a map with probably 20 plus districts. I also need to coordinate with folks on the other end of the building to see, you know, that we're not working on divergent, but parallel tracks when we might be able to work together or one takes lead over the other.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Does it make sense to have like a joint meeting, start turning this into more of a joint conversation and come together on it?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It's probably more of a chairs at leadership talking about who's gonna take the lead, but all of which I would keep everybody fully apprised of.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: Because I just think, like, talking with them, they sound like they some of them in that committee wanna have those conversations with us directly. I know you're saying between the chairs, I just think that I know some people like and don't like having everyone in the same room. Just, you know, it's more done faster.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah. But, yeah. Be continued. Well, let's talk about the superintendent associations. Two to 4,000 recommendation. Let's say we went down the path of saying we want new larger districts. For anybody, is that a red line? And I think we should see if we have a lower end and an upper end. Go ahead, Chris.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: I have a blend, right? Because what about a two to six? I like to say two to eight, but I'm trying to be a little soft on it. Give it a little broader. Because you might run into, in Chittenden County, especially in the Burlington South Bronx, you might need to go on a higher side than four. I don't know, I'm just trying to think, can you massage that number a little higher? And then you're kind of

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: the best of both worlds? I think what we could say is to the extent practical as we did before, and say these are not hard because there may be areas where we can't get to two. Right.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Yeah. So, do we need a maximal? Or we just need to focus on them? Two and above.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Think, didn't the superintendents and their testimony? Think there is some research around when you start to lose efficiencies at a certain I it might be around eight is what we heard. Think that

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: your maximum might make sense. Yeah.

[Chris Taylor (Vice Chair)]: I think there's also information that in other states that they have significantly larger insulin and it does well. So I'm not saying go to 30,000 or 80,000, but I think having the conversation open to a higher number is appropriate at the time, right? But we're still trying to figure all this out, because since we don't seem to have a path at the moment, keeping that in place for where it might be more.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I am just, well, I'll have to talk first, but then I'll see if I can sum up my take on everybody's facial

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: I

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: think it makes sense to have the same minimum for every part of the state, because once you have that minimum, it triggers all these other things, and so why have that minimum?

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: If we

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: know that it's going trigger those things in certain parts of the state, why not make a lower minimum? Does that make sense?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Sure, we could also just say these are guidelines and not hard

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: That would be great too, but to get in certain rural areas up to 2,000, it's not going to happen. So

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: I encourage everybody to play with the mapping tool. And what's really amazing about it is you can create a district, sort of create a district and click over here and you can add SDs and SUs to it and it counts all the students. And I was actually rather surprised how quickly you clicked into 2,000.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Everywhere, all over the state? Closer.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Yeah, close. That's why I would I not

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: mean, that's sort of my point, right? Is that close is not the same as is. And so like then if we know that immediately there will be schools that always will be not

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: meeting the minimum, we should

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: just make it slightly lower so that it's a realistic representation of

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: what they If can

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: we draw lines, it's not the district's responsibility anymore to meet a number. It's our guideline. That won't jog them forever,

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: is

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: that what you're saying? It's not irresponsible. But as I was sort of clicking on things and putting things together, I'm like, but this part of the state is, because I'm a doomsdayer, is clearly going to see further declining enrollment. And as I put it here, it's like 1,800.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: District size of 2,000 to 4,000 or the 2,000 to 8,000, that's not a go or no go, I think that's a conversation we still need to have. I just want to understand within the whole realm of the foundation formula, lowering that minimum affects other things down the road before we all say yes, this is the way.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Because the point is scale. Correct. One month, right.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Just

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: pulled from Ed Week here, the plurality of regular school districts that had between one thousand and two thousand four hundred and ninety nine students enrolled. This was a couple of

[Emily Long (Member)]: years ago, but somewhat recent. So nationwide?

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Yes, nationwide. Just this background. I think of Well, how much number you're doing in roundup? Between 1,000 to 2,500. It's the majority of districts in The United States. I'm comfortable with the rough parameters that the BSA has given us and the research behind them. I think obsessing over creating districts based on numbers is a fool's errand. And if we aren't just looking at the real districts, the real schools, where they are now, where the kids are, condition of the buildings, this is where we are That, I do feel, is wasting time. We are not Let's talk about where the real people are, the real kids, the real taxpayers, the buildings, and where they might go and how it might Moving things on paper is the easy part. It's real work in the world. So I'm somewhat frustrated to be talking negotiating numbers, high to bottom line, top line. That just, to me, feels wholly inappropriate for the challenge we're facing. I mean, I think we're all like, there's a ballpark, sure. But to sort of haggle over, a thousand more up at the top, a thousand less at the bottom, it just feels so tone deaf to the policy problems we're facing.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It does provide, though, a bit of an objective criteria. I should agree with the guideline as opposed to the past. So, I'm not seeing anybody say I'm unwilling to go that low. At a minimum, I'm open to continuing to discuss this.

[Emily Long (Member)]: If

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: we get that.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: Oh, no, it didn't.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: Chris, to your question about how does it affect the foundation formula, would you mind finding somebody, maybe the chair of Ways and Means, and sort of pose that question and then come back, but I think it probably also would require some AoE, because they're the ones who have a lot of the modeling.

[Emily Long (Member)]: Are you asking to do it on every level?

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: No,

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: no, this is more of a like, if it isn't 4,000 to 8,000, the current foundation formula numbers were calculated on current expenses. The goal of achieving ending of the cost curve and the future Foundation Formula is based on 480,000. So to what extent, when you adjust that, does

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: it

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: have a small effect, does it have a large effect? Just quickly, when the bill left here, it was due to 4,000, right? No, 4,800. When it left here? Yes. Oh. Somebody has passed by.

[Emily Long (Member)]: The house was

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: in there.

[Emily Long (Member)]: It's for a floor report.

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: It's amazing how we forget the details, even even we were deeply immersed

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: in them. There's just so many changes along the way. Hard to keep track of where it was. I

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: just feel like the superintendent's been saying the same numbers three years.

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: They have been, and they

[Unidentified Member (House Education Committee)]: were not comfortable with the number that

[Emily Long (Member)]: Okay. Each or the people had was up here. For

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: fun, we could talk about creating a commission to Where did you draw maps?

[Emily Long (Member)]: Well, I'd say, yeah. Alright. That's enough. Jamie,

[Kate McCann (Member)]: a question we should be talking about is whether or not the maps are maps of larger districts or maps for CSOF? What what are we gonna make mandatory? And Yep. So I think maybe that's maybe there are more hard and fat, you know, red lines

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: if we So, this conversation has been about districts, it's not been about CISAs. Whether we make a CISA system mandatory, how to operationalize that. Other questions?

[Kate McCann (Member)]: So the question 2,000 to 4,000, thousand to 8,000, that was on districts, and was it on mandatory or not mandatory?

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: So I was basing it on what we heard, what I feel I heard from the Superintendent Association, which was two to four mandatory OSUs, sort of three big things. I think you could add onto that CSIS, I think they were strongest for that as well. Again, principals association said, just do SUs to SDs for now. That would leave in place some pretty small school districts.

[Emily Long (Member)]: And it would still be pretty significant change on both ends, locally and on the

[Peter Conlon (Chair)]: number of school districts we have. Yeah. So, cogitate, and we will be downstairs at 03:30.